


something like magic

by woominchans



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Closeted Character, Enemies to Lovers, Infidelity, M/M, More tags to be added, ONLY MINCHAN NSFW, Oral Sex, Some angst, auror!minho, baker hyunjin, chan's married, complex emotional relationships, doctor woojin, his wife and kid are OCs, more plot than nsfw, parent!chan, teacher felix
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2019-10-19 04:26:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17594606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woominchans/pseuds/woominchans
Summary: Heir to a Noble and Most Ancient wizarding house, Chan hates his perfect life. Unhappily married and stuck at a painfully dull job within the Ministry, his only joy comes from his love for his son, Junhyuk. Enter Auror Minho Lee, everything he shouldn't want but surprisingly the solution to his distaste for living.





	1. Twilfit and Tattings

 

Chan was bored.

 

It wasn't as if being bored was any great achievement in his line of work; as well as it paid to be Head of the Department of Ministry budgeting, it was far from thrilling. He didn’t even need the money, given that he was a Bang, something pretty much synonymous with the phrase ‘set for life’ in the Wizarding world. His parents, however, had pushed him in the direction of a ‘respectable career’, and there he festered, wishing every day that the next one wouldn't be the same. They always were, every hour blending into another in a blur of monotony. Hopes, dreams and optimism were not traits the heir to the considerable Bang legacy was permitted to possess.

 

On paper, sure, he had the perfect life. He’d married at twenty, become a father at twenty-two, and at just thirty he was head of an influential ministerial department. Staring at the pile of papers on his desk and groaning as another stack flew into the room, his life didn't seem quite so appealing. Twelve more torturous minutes dragged on by, and _finally_ it was time for his break. His lunchtime was at 1pm; to avoid the whole ministry stopping as one to eat, breaks were staggered and each worker was allotted a time slot. Chan was just so _lucky_ as to break at the same time as the junior aurors, meaning that what should have been a quiet, relaxing time in which he collected his cafeteria sludge and stared into the distance, contemplating how much he hated his life, was instead interrupted by-

 

“Hey handsome!” Auror Lee greeted as he strutted past Chan’s table like an oversized peacock to his large group of friends at the end of the lunch hall.

 

He was interrupted by _that,_ the junior auror in his mid-twenties who seemed to make it his life’s mission to annoy Chan. He really didn't understand how the other man was so clearly self-assured at so relatively young an age. Perhaps confidence came with the role of law enforcement, some hidden perk that they neglected to put on the brochure. One couldn't exactly believe everything the department told the excitable students on careers day, however. If Chan had to summarise his job in a truthful bullet point list, it wouldn't be an attractive career path.

 

_Here at the Department of Ministry Budgeting, we can offer exciting things such as:_

 

 

  * __Contemplating your meaningless existence.__


  * _Wondering if such a terrible occupation is worth its minimal perks._


  * _Paperwork. So much paperwork. If you ever see paperwork again outside of this job you'll probably scream._


  * _Literally nothing interesting. Nothing at all_



 

 

"Sure you don't want to come sit with us, babe?" Lee teased, waving him over over-exaggeratedly. Chan knew Lee was only doing it to annoy him, as he was one of very few that refused to pay attention to the handsome auror. His lack of interest made him interesting. Funny, that.

 

He rolled his eyes. “Quite sure, thank you, Lee.”

 

“That’s Minho to you, sweetheart!”

 

Chan didn't reply.

 

\------

 

Chan, as scion of the Noble and Most Ancient house of Bang, had always understood that his life was not truly his own, that he had a duty to his family lineage. Tradition only required that he produce a son and heir, so naturally Junhyuk had been the happiest addition to his life that he ever could have dreamed. Not only did he have a son, the only brightness in a life he despised, but he was no longer obligated to keep trying to have a child. He had never enjoyed Siyeon’s enthusiastic attempts to “produce an heir”, as much as the poor woman had tried to ensure his pleasure. Now, only his occasional worries that he was “broken” and “not a real man” would prompt him to half-heartedly engage in marital duties.

 

“I’m sure that Junhyuk would love a little brother or sister!” Siyeon would try to persuade him, giving him what she thought was a “come hither” expression. It just made Chan feel ill. She had never been the least bit attractive to him. Perhaps, had he not been contractually bound to her since infancy, he could have found a woman he truly desired. Maybe another wife could have made him happy.

 

He was snapped out of his reverie as a large group of people bustled past him, depositing their trays of dirty dishes at the kitchens’ serving hatch, where house elves hurried to collect them. He’d sat alone, staring off into space, for thirty minutes of a lunch break that was only forty.

 

Technically, he was supposed to have eaten quickly and then go to get his new robes for the upcoming Ministry Ball. It seemed that he would need to go after work had finished. At least it meant that he could delay getting home for an extra hour or so, perhaps even stretch it out with a fabricated story about Twilfit and Tattings being particularly busy. A small smile spread across his face at the thought, almost but not quite countering his guilt at how joyfully he’d avoid going home.

 

“What’re you grinning at?” his over enthusiastic assistant enquired as Chan re-entered the Department of Ministry Budgeting. He sighed, having hoped for months that the young man’s peppy attitude would die down, but it was not to be. Chan knew for a fact that he had been decidedly more serious at Seungmin’s age, which was pretty much fresh out of Hogwarts.

 

“Nothing, Seungmin,” he replied curtly, the smile well and truly wiped from his face. “Just thinking about my beautiful wife.”

 

“How sweet, sir!” Seungmin exclaimed with one of his signature beaming smiles. Chan wondered if the kid could be any more of a Hufflepuff. “Will I finally get to meet her at the ball?”

 

“I imagine so, Seungmin. Now, can we please get back to work? I hear that the Department of Magical Games and Sports have requested a new grant for-”

 

He was cut off as Seungmin hurried over with a pile of paperwork, meeting him halfway en route to his desk and eagerly continuing Chan’s sentence. “For the new range of Whirlwind brooms? Yes, the English team needs a bursary of two million galleons, but I think if we suggest earlier -but still national level- brooms such as the Oculus 35 for the reserve players then we’ll only need two-thirds of the proposed budget!” he exclaimed, brandishing the calculations he must have made over his lunch break. “What do you think, sir?”

 

“Perfect, thank you. I’ll look over the stats but your proposal seems well in order. Nice work,” he replied. At that, Seungmin looked excited enough to wet himself, rather like an oversized labrador puppy that had just been given a whole ham.

 

They were such polar opposites, Kim Seungmin and Bang Chan. For one, Seungmin was from a muggle family as opposed to one of the Noble and Ancient families. This was a detail that Chan had neglected to mention to his vehemently traditionalist parents when talking about work, as they’d likely get the poor boy fired to keep his influence away from their perfect pureblooded son. Another large difference was that Seungmin seemed to actually _enjoy_ calculating ministry expenditure, in his own nerdy way, whereas to Chan it was like watching paint dry.

 

Actually, watching paint dry was seeming more and more appealing by the second.

 

Somehow, he managed to make it through his shift, which was a modern day miracle if ever he’d seen one. Remembering McGonagall’s speech about how your career should be “something you love and enjoy”, he scoffed. What a steaming pile of hippogriff dung. If that were actually a requirement, he would have been able to pursue his passion for experimental charms without his father dismissing it as “too girly for a future Lord Bang”. Even a handwritten plea from Flitwick to his parents, begging them to not let Chan’s talent go to waste, had been ignored. It had actually made it worse, as his mother had called the professor a “filthy goblin half-breed”.

 

He hadn’t stopped using charms in his day-to-day life, however. With a complex wand movement and a silent mental command of _Verumesta_ , the mess of completed paperwork before him ordered itself chronologically and flew neatly into place on his desk. “I’m off, Seungmin!” Chan informed his assistant, the man nodding absentmindedly in response without glancing up from his own mountain of work, and walked briskly out of the office door. Leaving work was nearly always the highlight of Chan’s day, as depressing a fact as that was.

 

Stepping into one of the many grates reserved for ministry personnel in the Atrium, Chan threw the floo powder and clearly stated “Twilfit and Tattings”. In a flurry of fireplaces, he was whisked away to his destination.

 

To the proud man’s dismay, he stumbled slightly upon exiting the hearth at the other end, falling into a pair of arms which quickly righted him. Chan shivered at the action, though unsure as to why he had done so. When he looked up to thank his savior, he had to fight back a groan of despair. Of _course_ it had to be Auror Lee.

 

“I know I’m breathtaking, but there’s no need to literally fall for me,” he teased, testing Chan’s patience as he struggled to stay civil.

 

“Thank you for your assistance, Auror. I assure you I’m not usually prone to stumbling like a novice.”

 

“Think nothing of it, sweetheart. It’s Chan, right? And I said earlier that you can call me Minho, everyone does,” the handsome auror replied, winking at the end of his sentence for emphasis.

 

Chan, again, shivered. Was it cold and he just hadn’t registered it?

 

“Though I appreciated your aid, I hardly think it warranted such a degree of informality,” he responded curtly, rather vexed by the other man’s brazenness.

 

Before Lee could once more insist that Chan use his name, a bespectacled gentleman with a painstakingly styled moustache hurried over to him. “Sir, I’m incredibly sorry, but there will be a short delay. Normally I would, of course, fast-track your service, but Lord and Lady Greengrass are currently being fitted by our two tailors,” he apologised.

 

“But of course, I understand completely,” Chan acknowledged. Lord Greengrass, an aging man who had remained neutral in the Second Wizarding War, did not outrank Chan’s family- he was of equal social standing to Chan’s father. As a lord, however, versus Chan’s status as an heir, he did rank higher. “Would you please show me to a seat while I wait?”

 

“Certainly, sir!” the shop assistant affirmed, quickly showing Chan to a waiting room full of straight-backed velvet chairs.

 

“Wait a minute, mister,” Auror Lee complained from behind the assistant, who had been completely and deliberately ignoring his presence. “I’ve been standing by the damn fireplace twenty minutes and not once was I offered a seat!”

 

“Oh, they’re not for you, _sir_ ,” the assistant told him snidely. “This area is for the noble families that frequent our premises, not…” he paused as if holding back an insult; Lee was still wearing his Auror’s robes, after all. “Not _your sort_.”

 

“Excuse you?! _My_ sort?” Lee protested indignantly. “You prejudiced piece of-”

 

“He’s with me, don’t worry,” Chan told the assistant, cutting Lee’s righteous anger off. He was half driven by a sense of responsibility, wanting to pay the auror back for his earlier help, but also just could not be bothered with a fight at that point in the evening.

 

“My apologies, sir,” the assistant gushed, his remorse still directed entirely at Chan, snubbing Lee still further. “I’ll go check up on the tailors’ progress.”

 

“Over here, Lee,” Chan directed, dread coursing through him as he showed him to the Bang family’s reserved seating. He’d have to sit with the beautiful, obnoxious man until the tailors were ready for them, which was a far from welcome prospect. The joy of small talk was hardly his favourite activity. “My family has four seats here, so there’s plenty of room.”

 

Though Chan had hoped that, out of the four seats, Lee would sit with two seats between them, such a wish was not to be granted. In a slouch which would have given Chan’s old etiquette teacher a heart attack, Lee slumped down right next to him.

 

“So, reserved seats? Very fancy,” he remarked with more than a subtle touch of sarcasm. “God, this place is stuck up.”

 

“Why are you even here?” Chan responded, sounding ruder than he’d really intended to but making no move to correct himself.

 

Lee just laughed.

 

“Malkins has a line out the door,” he explained. “All the parents who’ve just sent their hellspawn off to Hogwarts are doing some celebratory shopping now that they don’t need babysitters.”

 

“Oh,” Chan said noncommittally, trying not to incite conversation, but to no avail.

 

“Besides, I need something fancier for the Ball and ‘cause everyone is flocking to Malkin’s they’re running out of the good fabrics down there,” he elaborated, pushing his hair back from his handsome face. Not that Chan cared how good-looking he was, not in the slightest. “Oh, don’t look at me like that- is my flamboyance ruffling your feathers, Mr Straight Guy?” he queried, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Wh-what?”

 

Chan wasn’t used to such blatancy. Upper class society was all polite smiles and hidden daggers, whereas Lee was brash and unapologetic, with the all the subtlety of a neon yellow bikini at a funeral. How he’d survived in Slytherin, Chan had no idea, especially as he was a half-blood to boot.

 

“Not that, then?” Lee pouted. “You’d think I’d be better at reading people in my line of work. What is it, then? Don’t you think I can afford this place?”

 

It was as good an excuse as any as to why Chan was looking at him oddly, and it sounded far less suspicious than “I was staring at you because you look like a model, but I’m not attracted to you, I swear,” so he just nodded.

 

Lee huffed. “My father may have been a muggle, but he was a rich one who made his millions in real estate. Didn’t any of your pureblood lessons teach you not to judge a book by its cover?”

 

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear about your father’s passing,” Chan said, politely sidestepping the question.

 

“I’m not,” Lee stated bluntly. “He was a homophobic twat who died before he could write me out of his will.”

 

“Oh,” Chan intoned eloquently.

 

“So, moving on, enough about me, what about you, are you in a relationship?” Lee asked, with a smile far more pleasant than his usual.

 

“Yes, I am,” he replied.

 

“Who’s the lucky guy?” Lee enquired, holding his serious expression for a few seconds before bursting into loud laughter at the look of horrified shock on Chan’s usually schooled features. “I’m joking, I’m joking!”

 

“I have a beautiful wife and a great son,” Chan told him with very little emotion. “I’m very happy,” he elaborated with, perhaps, even less.

 

“Wow, sounds like it,” Lee laughed.

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?!” Chan demanded, standing up angrily.

 

“Oh chill your boots, babe. It just sounds rehearsed, is all,” Lee retorted, raising his hands defensively. Chan found his eyes straying to them, drinking in the sight.

 

Shaking his head to rid it of the confusing train of thought, he was about to sit down when the sales assistant rushed back into the room.

 

“All good to go, sir!” he enthused, smiling smarmily at Chan. Even though Lee had been at the shop for longer, it was to Chan that he said “Your turn now, if you’ll just follow me; the tailors are ready and waiting.”

 

“Let Auror Lee go first, he’s next in line,” Chan countered.

 

A pause and a haughty sniff followed before the assistant begrudgingly turned to Lee instead. “Fine.”

 

“Come with, Channie!” Lee encouraged. “I can help you with the style you obviously desperately lack in return for the fancy seating.”

 

Chan sighed, but acquiesced, making to push himself up out of the chair. Before he could, however, Lee was pulling him up. His hand was warm, the callouses from his very active career rough against Chan’s soft skin. He found he rather liked the feeling.

 

Following the assistant, both men entered a large room with walls covered in samples of expensive fabrics and sketches of robes. Lee looked quite excited about it, but Chan had seen it all before. This was far from his first visit to Twilfit and Tattings, though he was usually with Siyeon when doing so. If given the choice, he would quite honestly rather be shopping with Lee; as irritating as he found the man, he was still more welcome company.

 

Whether or not such thoughts made him a bad person was something he’d ignore.

 

At first, the two were served separately, giving Chan the false hope that he might be able to shop free of interference. But, when he nodded absentmindedly at one in a long line of multiple plain fabrics, Lee stepped in.

 

“It’s amazing that, despite being heir to a fortune, you still manage to dress like you’ve five knuts to your name. You truly astound me, Bang,” he jibed. For some reason, Chan disliked that Lee had called him ‘Bang’ more than the insult itself.

 

“Well, Lee, what would you recommend to save me from my ‘fashion curse’?” he snipped, tone somewhere between real annoyance and joking. He wasn’t sure himself which of the two he related to more.

 

“Well, Chan,” He let out a relieved breath that the first name was back, not that he cared. “If we’re close enough to share clothing tips, I think we’re close enough for you to call me Minho. Or is it too much of an ‘informality’?” Lee asked, his stupidly handsome smile at full brightness.

 

‘Yes’ he wanted to say, ‘that _is_ too informal’. Chan didn’t want to be Lee’s friend. But if he could stop Siyeon turning up her nose at his clothing whilst pursing her face like she’d just frenched a lemon, then perhaps it would be worth it.

 

“Okay then… _Minho_ , what would you recommend?” He gave in, letting him win. Calling him Minho was no huge sacrifice in the grand scheme of things, he supposed.

 

“Well, getting rid of _this_ would be an immediate improvement,” he replied, gesturing to all of the fabric choices he’d made so far, and then to the clothes Chan was actually wearing. “And before you run away, no, I did not mean that you should be naked, just that your current clothes are hideous. Although,” He let his eyes run over Chan from head to to, making him shift uncomfortably under his gaze. “The first option isn’t all that bad either.”

 

Chan’s mouth went dry. Nervously, he wet his lips. “So, my clothes for the ball.”

 

Minho pouted. “Oh fine, you’re no fun. Well, this style will suit you,” he gestured to a design tacked to the wall nearby. It depicted a pair of open fronted black robes in a simple, yet elegant, cut. “And underneath, just smart black dress trousers and a white shirt. I assume you have something along those lines already, so I won’t go into too much detail there.” He turned to the nearest tailor, who looked a little affronted at being addressed by him, but complied nonetheless when he instructed “Have these robes made up with the silver trim, rather than that horrible gold disaster in the sketch, and we’ll be all good for him.”

 

While that tailor bustled away, presumably to craft the robes in the next room, the female of the pair reluctantly moved forward to help Minho with his own choice in robes. His ideas for himself were a lot more complex than for Chan’s, debating everything from the shade of silver the buttons would be to the type of thread used to stitch the suit beneath the robes. Eventually, tailor number two hurried off to create Minho’s vision. His clear and detailed knowledge of fashion had made the uptight woman warm slightly to him despite his lack of ‘proper breeding’.

 

As everything purchased at Twilfit and Tattings was charmed to resize to the physique of its first wearer, Chan had no need to try his new outfit on before leaving.

 

“The other gentleman’s outfit will be a while longer,” the tailor told him as he handed over the packaged clothes. “Maureen had a far more extensive task than I.”

 

“Thank you,” Chan replied, before turning to Minho. “I guess I’ll be off now,” he said awkwardly, holding out a hand for him to shake. “I much appreciated your help with this.”

 

“No problem- it was my _pleasure_ ,” Minho drew out the last word for longer than was perhaps necessary. Then, instead of taking Chan’s hand as he had offered, he pulled him into a hug. Chan wasn’t sure how to react; hugs were uncomfortable ordeals reserved for relatives at tedious Christmas parties. They weren’t for beautiful near-strangers, and they certainly weren’t meant to feel so nice. He stiffened, confusion clouding his mind, and Minho let him go.

 

“Sorry, should have figured you weren’t the hugging type. I always hug my friends goodbye so it was mostly instinctual,” he apologised, his eyes showing that he wasn’t sorry at all, but rather amused by Chan’s reaction.

 

“Well, I suppose it’s good that we aren’t friends, then, isn’t it?” Chan said by way of a parting remark as he strode away, out of the shop and as far away from Minho as he could be.

 

\-----------------------

 

“Welcome home, master!” Mipsy, his house elf, excitedly greeted him as soon as he walked through the front door, effectively ruining any chance he may have had at sneaking in quietly.

 

“Thank you, Mipsy,” Chan replied, cringing as he saw Siyeon walk into the hallway, glare at full force. _Shit._ He’d forgotten to owl her about him going shopping, making him two hours late from work with no prior warning.

 

“What the hell, Chan?” she yelled, striding over to him and putting her hands on her hips. “I was worried sick about you, you bastard! Why I even care, I have no idea, seeing as you didn’t bother to tell me where you were.”

 

“Calm down, darling. I was at Twilfits, I just forgot to owl you. It wasn’t like I was gone the night,” he tried to placate her. Apparently he had failed, however, as her glare only intensified. He hadn’t thought that that was possible.

 

“Calm down? _Calm down?!_ Don’t you _dare_ tell me to calm down right now, you insensitive son of a- Junhyuk!” she cut off abruptly as the door to the hallway opened.

 

“You actually got that the wrong way around, Siyeon,” he couldn’t resist adding before turning to smile at his son, who had just come into the hall. The fact that his appearance had stopped Siyeon yelling at him for the time being only made him even more of a welcome sight. “Shall we go back into the dining room?”

 

“Sure!” Junhyuk replied, scampering back into the room he’d just emerged from.

 

“Your food is on the table under a stasis charm, _dear_ ,” Siyeon spat as they followed their son. It was indeed, and he hurried to sit down in front of it. Until then, he hadn’t realised just how hungry he’d become since his lunch break, his mind otherwise occupied by work, shopping and... Minho.

 

At the other end of the table, Junhyuk was deeply invested in a game of Wizarding chess, which he was playing solo.

 

“Knight to D5,” he ordered decisively.

 

“Are you sure about that? I’ll get killed by the bishop for sure,” the black knight replied nervously.

 

“Yes, now move!” he repeated, and the knight dutifully moved to its appropriate place as Junhyuk spun the board around so he was playing as white. “Bishop to D5.”

 

“Are you kidding me?” the black knight exclaimed as it was smashed to the floor of the board. “I _told_ you this would happen,”

 

Junhyuk switched back to playing as black. “Sometimes sacrifices need to be made. Queen to D5,” he ordered, and, after said piece did as he told it to, “Checkmate.”

 

“Well done, sweetie,” Siyeon praised dutifully, hugging him in the detached sort of way she always did. She’d never understood Junhyuk’s love of chess, and often complained to Chan once their son had gone to sleep about how much the child spent on the game. “Shall we talk to your father now about your idea?”

 

“Idea?” Chan was intrigued.

 

“Junhyuk has been getting incredibly bored at my society functions and would rather be doing something that he deems ‘worth his while’,” she elaborated.

 

“Go on…”

 

“I want to go to school!” Junhyuk blurted out animatedly. “I’ve literally read all the books in our family library, Father- I need to learn more.”

 

“Junhyuk, Hogwarts doesn’t start until you’re eleven, and you’re only eight. You can’t go early,” Chan reminded him apologetically.

 

“Not _Hogwarts_ ,” Junhyuk corrected him, as if he’d been an idiot to suggest such a thing. “I want to go to the local muggle primary school- going to one is practically like learning OWL level content for muggle studies. I could probably take the exam in first year!”

 

With his son’s excitement about potentially taking an exam five years early, Chan had no doubt at all as to which house he’d end up in.

 

“Do you think you that you can keep from mentioning it to your grandparents? They’d kill me on the spot if they heard I’d let you do such a thing,” he asked, only half joking about the second part.

 

“Absolutely, Father! My lips are sealed,” Junhyuk earnestly mimed zipping his mouth closed.

 

“And what about your etiquette lessons on Wednesdays and Fridays?”

 

“Master Finmoore says that I don’t really need them anymore, but mother says I can have a fortnightly refresher session every other Saturday,” Junhyuk explained. He was clearly very serious about going to muggle school, and had accounted for pretty much everything. Chan had to give the kid credit. Adding that to the look Siyeon was giving him, threatening dismemberment if he didn’t comply, he really had no choice.

 

“Fine, you can go!” he relented, glad he did so when Junhyuk’s rare smile lit up the room.

 

“Excellent- Junhyuk and I will be going to look around Springwood Primary tomorrow. I’ve arranged for us to be given a tour, then Junhyuk will get to talk to the teacher for his year to make sure that they get on,” Siyeon informed him, looking slightly less pissed off than she had been for the last twenty minutes.

 

“It’s already arranged? I suppose I had no say at all in this from the get go,” Chan remarked.

 

“None at all, dear,” Siyeon confirmed, smiling sweetly as she cleared away his dinner plate. Given that she was holding a steak knife, he dared not question further. Even when Mipsy popped in and took the plate and cutlery from his wife, he still remained quiet. Siyeon didn’t need a weapon to terrify him.

 

With that, Chan picked up the briefcase that he’d set down next to his chair at the dinner table, politely excused himself and walked away, headed to his upstairs study. Without him even asking, Mipsy appeared with a glass tumbler of firewhiskey, setting it down upon his desk.

 

“Can Mipsy fetch anything else for Master?” she enquired in her squeaky little voice.

 

“That’ll be all, thank you, Mipsy,” he told her. A crack sounded through the room as she vanished, presumably to carry on tidying up the kitchen before she went to sleep in her room in the attic. Some house owners only allowed their elves to curl up in a cupboard under the sink, or somewhere equally damp and revolting. The Bang family, for all their faults, had never mistreated their staff.

 

He took a large gulp of his firewhiskey, relishing the burn in his throat as it went down. His evening had been one riddled with confusion, and he wished he could just make his conflicting emotions go away.

 

Sadly, that was not to be. Instead of dampening his muddle of thoughts, the alcohol amplified his doubts, bringing them inescapably to the forefront of his mind.

 

Before he’d snapped back to serious mode and stormed away, Chan had actually had _fun_ at the tailors. Coming from a man who never had any fun at all, that was quite something. Auror Lee, or _Minho_ as he so often insisted he be called, had managed to make him forget for a wonderful while how much he hated his life.

 

What did that mean, however?

 

Even at Hogwarts, Chan had never relaxed with a peer as he had with Minho. He’d forced himself to hang out with fellow Slytherins in his year at mealtimes and in between classes to muster ‘important social connections’ at the insistence of his parents, and never really had anyone who he’d truthfully consider a friend.

 

He was remarkably liberally minded for someone who came from an old family, though he’d never voiced it at school for fear of being ostracized within his house, and was thus usually uncomfortable in the presence of his housemates. Those who didn't subscribe to pureblood ideals were on his parent’s list of people he was never to talk to. That must be it, then; he was so starved of casual interaction with people who weren't inbred bigots or his immediate family, that he’d jumped at the chance to talk with Minho, as much as he complained along the way.

 

Lee Minho was astoundingly handsome, a fact which Chan thought about more than one could consider normal. A man could admire another’s appearance without it being anything wholly unnatural, however. In fact, it was probably just him projecting how he wished that he himself were young and carefree like Minho. The racing in his heart when the other man drew closer, that was just the thrill of ignoring his cemented place in wizarding society. It was all new and exciting, but purely platonic.

 

How could it be anything but?

 

_He was a Bang, after all._


	2. The Non-Auror Task Force

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was always amusing to tease straight men and, according to his fellow aurors, Bang was as straight as they got.
> 
> Was he really, though?
> 
> Minho was not so sure.

While Chan lay in bed next to his wife, wide awake and staring at his ceiling, Minho was walking into his favourite bar, a muggle one on the outskirts of London called ‘Firezone’. It didn’t have the best name in the world, but it had some of the best drinks he’d ever had, so he kept coming back. Although many people in it were still judgemental assholes, the muggle world was still more progressive than wizarding Britain. They’d moved on from archaic laws and marriage contracts. 

 

He hadn’t been all that pleased to be saddled with Bang at Twilfits, but had decided to make the most of it. It was always amusing to tease straight men and, according to his fellow aurors, Bang was as straight as they got.

 

Was he really, though?

 

Minho was not so sure.

 

He’d thought that he must’ve been imagining things when Bang shivered in his arms after falling straight into them from the fireplace. Perhaps it was colder than he realised, he had reasoned with himself. Despite this, similarly suspicious things kept happening for the whole hour or so that they were together. When he pulled him up from the chair, he’d held onto his hand for slightly too long. Furthermore, when Minho had pushed back his hair, a signature flirting trick of his which nearly always drew all eyes to him, the other man’s breath had audibly caught in his throat. As far as Minho could tell, Bang was at the very least curious, and he very much doubted that the attraction stopped there. 

 

When he’d finally managed to get Chan to call him by his first name, Minho found he rather liked the way it sounded coming from the high-class pureblood. He wondered how it’d sound as a breathy gasp, and endeavoured to find out. As the best in his class, Minho was somewhat coasting in his training and didn’t have much to do in his free time except frequent bars. This could be somewhat of a game to him, he was bored and it’d be quite the achievement to seduce a guy some would argue was ‘the most painfully straight man in all of the Ministry of Magic’. Until actually talking to him, discounting his frequent joking catcalls in the cafeteria, Minho had been taken in by everyone else’s opinions on the man, assuming that he was 100% straight, but after doing so, he wasn’t quite so sure. 

 

Perhaps Bang had a contract. It’d certainly explain why he sounded anything from happy when talking about his home life. Minho’s mother had been supposed to marry someone in Pureblood society, as she herself was of ‘pure descent’, but then she got knocked up by a muggle and she was disowned for terminating the contract’s requirements. Said muggle was Minho’s father, who for all his faults had at least not abandoned Marie when she needed him. If Chan was, indeed, closeted as Minho was beginning to expect, he understood exactly what he would have given up had he not married his wife and dutifully produced an heir as his parents had commanded. 

 

He was jolted out of his musings when the guy who’d been eying him from across the bar from the past half hour finally made a move and approached him.

 

“Hey, can I buy you a drink?” the tall, bearded man asked, a sleazy grin on his face. Not the most original pick up line in the world, but Minho was bored so didn’t really care. Plus, free drinks were always a bonus.

 

“Of course, sweetheart,” Minho replied, looking up at him with a practiced smile. “You can even buy me more than that, if you want.”

 

The man leered and slid onto the bar stool next to Minho, one large hand sliding up his thigh. 

 

\-----------------------

 

The next morning, after Chan had kissed her on the cheek hastily and then run off to work, Siyeon was getting ready to take Junhyuk to his tour of Springwood Primary. She was actually quite excited about it, as it was a change from the morning tea parties she attended most weekdays. 

 

_ “ _ _ Undulatis capillus!” _ she said firmly, waving her wand in a spiral motion in the direction of her hair. It shimmered slightly, and then fell into gentle waves. A few more simple charms later, and . her makeup was all done, asides from her lipstick. That, she did the muggle way. As one of her roommates at Hogwarts had taught her, no spell yet crafted could recreate the perfect shade of lipstick.

 

“Mother, are you ready?” Junhyuk called from the table, where he hadn’t even looked up from his game of chess to ask her. 

 

“Yes, darling, so we should really be getting away,” she told him. He leapt up to join her as she walked out of the room, but not before carefully placing his chessboard on the bedside table. “Okay, Junhyuk. We’re going to apparate to the alley outside of the school today, but in future we may need to take a car in case people start getting suspicious about how we’re getting there.

 

“Couldn’t we just confund them?” Junhyuk enquired, completely serious.

 

“No, honey. We aren’t allowed to do that to muggles unless it’s strictly necessary, it’s immoral,” Siyeon explained patiently.

 

“Morals are so boring, mother,” he complained. “Grandfather says it’s okay as long as you don’t get caught and it isn’t anything damaging.”

 

“Did he, now? Well, your father and I will be having a little talk about his parents later. Meanwhile, make sure to run anything by me in future before you take it to heart. Sometimes your father can be wrong,” she said, inwardly cursing her husband’s family. The stupid,  _ stupid  _ idiots. “Hold onto my hand now, honey.”

 

Sharply, she spun on the spot and apparated with a crack, both of them reappearing next to some wheelie bins in the secluded alley next to the school. Siyeon wrinkled her nose daintily at the rather unpleasant smell emanating from the nearest bin, inside of which she swore she could hear something crawling around. Still holding onto her son’s hand, she power-walked out of the alley as fast as she could and they headed towards the school’s front doors.

 

After they both signed in, a child suddenly stood up from where she’d been sitting on a chair in the reception. Siyeon had assumed that she was waiting to be taken home sick or something along those lines but, as the girl enthusiastically told them, she was to be their tour guide.

 

“Hi, I’m Lena, I’m eleven and I’m in Year Six!” she informed them for some reason. “I’ll be showing you around the school today before you meet with the Year Four teacher. He’s really really nice, I’m sure you’ll love him.”

 

Though Lena did, to her credit, point out such landmarks around the school and its grounds such as the lunchroom, the playground and the girls toilets, most of their walk with her was taken up with her over enthusiastically sharing every detail about her life in a rather high pitched voice. Siyeon could only hope that the rather irritating child didn’t scare Junhyuk off the school altogether. 

 

“And that’s why I was elected Junior Miss Bravo Ballet!” Lena finished off as they reached a classroom labelled ‘Rose Class’ and, in smaller print, ‘Dr Felix Lee. “This is the Year Four classroom! All the classes from reception to Year Four are named after flowers, by the way.” 

 

She had already told them three times.

 

“Thank you, sweetie, I think we have it from here,” Siyeon told her, feeling as if her head would explode if she had to listen to Lena for one more minute. “Thank you so much for your help.”

 

“Well, that’s perfectly timed. Break actually starts in two minutes so I’m going to get a head start on the tuck shop line- today is bacon buttie day!” she told them exuberantly, running off away down the corridor towards the lunchroom.

 

True to Lena’s word, two minutes later the bell rang and children started pouring out of the classroom as if it’d sprung a leak. All that was left behind was a sandy-haired man, presumably the teacher, who had his back to them as they entered the room. He was re-organising some books on the shelf above his desk and didn’t notice they were even there until Siyeon delicately coughed to get his attention. Jumping as if a gunshot had been fired, he dropped three large books on the floor, scrambling to pick them up.

 

“Hi, sorry, just one second,” he greeted them as he put the books in their respective places. Once he was done, he continued. “Okay, so you must be Junhyuk Bang,” he gestured to Junhyuk, “And you, I presume, are his lovely mother?”

 

“You presume correctly, Doctor,” Siyeon confirmed with a small smile, feeling her face heat up.

 

This man, her son’s soon-to-be teacher if all went well, was quite possibly the most attractive man she had ever seen. Part of her thought she should really be thinking that about her husband, but he’d been such an incorrigible twit as of late that she didn’t feel all that guilty. “Do you have a few minutes to talk with my son?”

 

“Why, of course. Junhyuk, I assume that you’re interested in transferring to Springwood. Was your last school not working for you or have you guys just moved to the area?” he enquired. Siyeon watched the movement of his mouth as he spoke and sighed softly. Why did she have to be married?

 

“No to both, actually, Doctor Lee,” Junhyuk replied. “I’ve lived here all my life, but I’ve been home schooled by a combination of my mother and a paid tutor until now.”

 

“You’re remarkably well spoken for an eight year old, Junhyuk,” he marveled.

 

“I read a lot,” was all Junhyuk gave as an explanation for his advanced speech. His eyes suddenly lit up; he had clearly just spotted the ornately carved chess set sitting on the shelf with the books Dr Lee had recently tidied up. “You play chess?!”

 

“Oh, that? Yes, I’ve played since I was a small boy. I actually won an under 18s championship back in the day, and I’ve played in local competitions ever since. Do you like the game?” Dr Lee replied with a smile, having found something to bond with this prospective student over.

 

“Chess is the best invention to ever emerge from this otherwise worthless age of man,” Junhyuk said, entirely seriously. 

 

Siyeon winced; her son was going all ‘crazy chess maniac’ on his potential teacher. Surprisingly enough, however, Dr Lee didn’t run to the hills, but instead grinned at Junhyuk’s enthusiasm. 

 

“If you put even half as much effort into class as you obviously put into chess, I can see you becoming one of my star students, Junhyuk,” Dr Lee told the child encouragingly. “Do you think you’d like being taught by me?”

 

A tense pause followed as Junhyuk appraised him silently, not blinking in the time it took him to do so. And then, “I suppose I’m open to the idea,” he admitted. “You’re far more interesting already than my private tutor.”

 

“I won’t tell Master Finmoore that, you might hurt his feelings!” Siyeon joked after letting out the breath she’d been holding while Junhyuk made up his mind. Him being at school was going to make her life so much easier, as she spent half her time at the social functions worrying that Junhyuk’s boredness would make him act out with accidental magic as he often did. Lady Marissa Everington’s hat was never quite the same after the boy had turned it into a live turkey. 

 

“Well, it has been an absolute pleasure to meet you both,” Dr Lee told them both, beaming. “I cannot wait to see you in my class soon, Junhyuk.”

 

“Goodbye, Dr Lee, it was lovely to make your acquaintance,” Junhyuk replied formally.

 

“I’ll be seeing you soon as well when I drop off Junhyuk, I imagine,” Siyeon added, smiling sweetly at him. “Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.”

 

“Believe me,” Dr Lee answered. “Inspiring young minds is all the thanks I need.”

 

\-----------------------

 

“Minho, wake up!” a voice was calling to him. 

 

He shook his hair like a wet dog, trying and failing to rid his mind of its pounding headache. All he could remember from the night before was that he was about to go home with someone from that muggle bar, and now he could hear someone familiar calling his name? What on earth had happened?

 

“Minho, you get your lazy ass off my cushions and take a shower. You smell fucking awful,” a different voice said, far louder than the other. It was then that he realised where he must be, and opened his eyes with a wince at the sunlight streaming through Hyunjin and Woojin’s apartment window. 

 

“Wh-wha?” he mumbled intelligently, looking up at where his two closest friends stood in front of the sofa. “How did I even get here?”

 

“Well, I don’t know the full story as I was on the night shift at 3AM when you turned up at our flat, so maybe my boyfriend can fill you in,” Woojin replied, still looking peeved.

 

“Well, honey, you showed up in the early hours incredibly drunk and complaining that you couldn’t find your key, so I put you on the sofa after you puked your guts out all over our living room floor. Thankfully, I was able to scourgify it before it stained. You then said, and I quote, ‘that guy was so ugly I’m glad I didn’t go home with him’ and then passed out,” Hyunjin explained. 

 

Minho groaned. “Oh wow, drunk me is brutally honest.”

 

“You also said that the sofa cushions were ugly,” Hyunjin interjected with a devilish smile, Woojin immediately glaring at their friend.

 

“He said  _ WHAT?!”  _ he yelled angrily. 

 

“On second thoughts,” Minho hastily amended, “Drunk me is just a big ol’ liar.”

 

“That’s what I thought. Now, shower!” Woojin ordered, and he stood up to do so.

 

“What time even is it?” he asked.

 

“Eleven,” Hyunjin replied.

 

Minho’s eyes widened. “ _ Shit _ , I’m in work at twelve. I’m so lucky it's only a half day today because Potter’s off sick and can’t do our weapons training.”

 

“Yes, but you’ve still got a busy day ahead of you,” Hyunjin pointed out.

 

“I do?” he asked, confused.

 

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten it’s assessments in the afternoon today and through the rest of the week?” Woojin reminded him incredulously.

 

“Oh fuck, please tell me you have a hangover potion?”

 

“I’ve half a mind to not give it to you for insulting my cushions, but yes, we do,” Woojin relented. “Now, do I really have to tell you for a third time to get your smelly arse to the shower?”

 

“No, no!” he replied, running away to go do as she said. 

 

Twenty minutes later he emerged, considerably less pungent and hair a mess over his forehead. Hyunjin handed him the hangover potion and he downed the unpleasant tasting concoction in one, feeling the effects instantly as his head stopped pounding and the daylight stopped feeling like lasers attacking his retinas. 

 

“Do you have time for breakfast?” Hyunjin inquired eagerly as he emerged from the kitchen.

 

“What’s on offer?” he asked, somewhat wary but trying to hide his apprehension. Hyunjin was the best baker he’d ever been fortunate enough to meet, but his other cooking was usually inedible at best. 

 

“I made scrambled eggs!” he told him proudly, and his stomach turned at the thought. The last time he’d made those, they had somehow been brown and runny.

 

“You know what, I gotta run to work; maybe next time, my love,” Minho replied, dashing forward to hug him and kiss his cheek, doing the same to Woojin before making a beeline towards their floo. 

 

\-----------------------

 

Chan usually enjoyed the annual assessment every employee had to undergo each year; it was an escape from his usual job and he got to do actual magic rather than sitting behind a desk.

 

Ever since the Second Wizarding War and its climatic finish, Minister Shacklebolt had quite rightly determined that the Ministry needed to be able to defend itself from outside forces. Obviously, they couldn’t expect all the workers to be international duelling champions, but basic defensive skills within the Ministry were seriously lacking during the wartime period, which had made it all the more easy for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to infiltrate it. 

 

Now, it was a non-negotiable requirement: to be Minister or a part of their circle of advisory staff, you had to be able to completely throw off the Imperious curse with ease. The same applied to being a departmental head, a challenge which Chan had managed to overcome two years ago with tutelage from an unspeakable. 

 

For all employees, not just the heads of departments, there was a yearly assessment to judge how useful they would be if the ministry came under siege again. Four afternoons a year, the four-hundred strong auror department would be assigned to individually test their fellow ministry personnel. If the worker lasted more than a minute against the trained auror, they passed. If not, they’d have to undergo further training over the following weeks until they were able to do so. It didn’t sound like a long time, but the aurors truly were the best of the best. 

 

Most didn’t pass the test first time each year. 

 

Chan had every time and he was determined to keep up his streak. 

 

His parents were always incredibly strict that he attend his tri-weekly duelling sessions during the school holidays (before he’d gone to Hogwarts they had been every week day since age seven) and thus he was an incredibly competent dueller. In his later years at Hogwarts, his duelling prowess had come in useful when his housemates tried to intimidate him into taking the dark mark. The Bangs, though blood purists to their very core, were fiercely proud and refused to bow before a ‘master’; this, at least, Chan could get behind. 

 

In Chan’s seventh year, he had to be homeschooled and couldn’t take his NEWTs until after the war had finished, as his family had gone into hiding under the Fidelius charm. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had been most displeased when they had repeatedly refused to join him, and had instructed the Death Eaters in Chan’s year to make an example of him to send a gruesome message to his parents. Thankfully said buffoons had attempted to kill him outside of the Hogwarts grounds, so he had managed to fend the six boys off long enough to apparate away. 

 

_ Chan was understandably confused when two of his yearmates insisted that they needed to talk to him at the first Hogsmeade weekend of the year, but had stupidly agreed to walk off with them to the area by the fenced-off grounds of the Shrieking Shack. He hadn’t been too intimidated, as it was only Terence Higgs and Feliz  _ _ Urquhart and he knew that even both of them together couldn’t take him in a fight. However, when they arrived, four more of his peers emerged from the trees nearby.  _

 

_ It was then that the alarm bells began to ring in Chan’s mind.  _

 

_ He started trying to walk away, but within seconds his housemates had him surrounded, circling him like an ugly, inbred pack of wolves. Thinking of this, even in his state of rapidly increasing panic, Chan thanked his lucky stars that his heritage, though pure, didn’t involve the marrying of blood relatives. Ternicius Vaisey’s parents were first cousins, and his wide spaced eyes and large puffy lips made him look rather like a goldfish. _

 

_ “This is your last chance to do the right thing and agree to take our master’s Mark,” Warrington threatened, pushing Chan roughly with one of his big, beefy hands. He fell down onto the damp ground, getting covered in mud and yet still managing to look more dignified than them all.  _

 

_ “You and I both know that isn’t going to happen, Gordon,” Chan spat back at him defiantly.  _

 

_ “Crucio!” growled Pollux Fendall, his intent enough that the curse came out strong, but his aim so poor that Chan barely had to move to avoid it as he leapt back up from the ground. _

 

_ He knew he shouldn’t goad the six boys surrounding him but he really couldn’t help it. Chan was too arrogant for his own good. “That all you have for me, Fendall? My seven-year-old cousin could cast a spell more accurately.” _

 

_ Vaisey resulted to brute force, something a Protego couldn’t protect Chan from as his nose shattered under the other boy’s fist. Blood flowed profusely down his face as he swayed slightly on the spot, blinking back tears of pain.  _

 

_ “Crucio!” Fendall repeated, hitting Chan even as he tried to dive out of the way and eliciting a guttural scream of agony. Luckily, even though he was able to cast the spell, he didn’t have the magical power to hold it for very long. _

 

_ “Stupefy maxima!” Chan yelled in a broken voice once the Crucio lifted, effectively knocking out Vaisey for at least twenty-four hours. From the corner of his eye, he saw Fendall wave his wand, casting a silent spell. This time, his aim was true and Chan’s hasty “Protego!” was only just enough to save him from what he suspected was the entrail-expelling curse.  _

 

_ It hit him then that they weren’t just trying to hurt him to make him bow to the Dark Lord’s will. Clearly, the powerful wizard had given up on trying to convert him and had ordered his death. “Magno Capitis,” he retaliated, watching as Fendall fell to the ground clutching his head in his hands. While he was incapacitated, Chan rendered him unconscious with another stunner. _

 

_ The four left paused momentarily. Fendall had been their leader of sorts, the most magically gifted of the six seventh years by a long stretch, and him being out of commission had clearly not been planned for. Taking advantage of their confused pause from attacking him, Chan spun on the spot and disapparated, appearing outside his childhood home. _

 

_ Mrs. Bang was sitting outside, and was suitably shocked when her son appeared, muddied, bloody and with a wild look in his eyes. “Chan?! What on earth has happened to you?” she exclaimed, running forward to him in an uncharacteristic deviance from her usually emotionless persona. _

 

_ “Dark Lord. Attack. We need to run,” Chan choked out. His mother’s eyes widened even more, and she ran back to the house.  _

 

_ “Jihyun!” she screamed. “They’re coming for us!” _

 

After that, they had fled to a holiday home in France pre-equipped with the Fidelius charm, and had spent a year there before the Dark Lord’s defeat. Chan was in the year above the Golden Trio at Hogwarts, but thanks to his year in hiding he’d had to take his NEWTs the same year as Granger, not that her name was still as such nowadays, the only one of the three who actually completed their examinations despite having offers for jobs in the Ministry. She’d beat him by one grade, achieving all Os in her seven subjects, whereas he’d only got an Exceeds Expectations in Potions. 

 

On the subject of the Golden Trio, he’d actually been tested by Weasley last year. While an interesting opportunity, he was only six seconds off the three minute mark meaning he would have qualified to train as a NATF member, and against most other aurors he suspected he would have made the cut. 

 

The NATF (Non Auror Task Force) were a group of workers in the ministry who could assist the aurors in the event of a siege, whereas other personnel were advised to run and hide from the assailants. Although they were only to be used if there were significantly reduced Auror numbers, i.e. if there was an attack during a large scale raid elsewhere, it was still a testament to his skill and Chan was determined to qualify. He was an incredibly proud man, and at 30 he would be the youngest in the force. 

 

At that moment, he was sitting in the waiting area, doing some paperwork as his assigned appointment time, 2:35, was already long past, the clock ticking its way towards five to. He doubted he’d be seen any time soon. Just as he thought that, however, he was disrupted from his riveting work on the inter-department budgeting challenge as a tall, pot-bellied man called out “Chan Bang?”

 

“That’s me,” Chan identified himself as he stood up, clearing the papers off his lap and into his briefcase with a wave of his wand. 

 

“If you’ll just go over to the wand assessment station, then they’ll send you right on to your assigned auror,” pot-bellied man instructed him. Chan nodded politely and did as such, walking over to where a severe looking witch with prominently bushy eyebrows was waiting for him. He’d had this stage with her the previous few years, remembering her name to be Beatrice Marple. 

 

“Any changes since last year, Mr Bang?” Marple enquired, holding out her hand for his wand. He handed it over, shaking his head.

 

“No, nothing new. Same as ever,” he confirmed. 

 

“If you could just state your wand’s specifications for the record, Mr Bang.”

 

“Dragon heartstring core, English oak, thirteen inches,” he responded clearly. 

 

“Has there been any damage to your wand in the past twelve months?” she asked boredly, reading from a sheet of questions in front of her.

 

“No.”

 

“To your knowledge, is it in perfect working order?” 

 

“Yes, absolutely,” Chan replied, smiling politely as she handed back his wand. 

 

“That’ll be all. As you’re a Head of Department, please proceed to the Imperius testing room at the end of the corridor,” she told him in a monotone.

 

Chan thanked her and began the long walk down the corridor. He could hear the muffled sounds of his colleagues being tested in the many examination rooms he passed, making him slightly nervous about his own assessment. 

 

Not  _ that _ nervous, though. He was fully confident in his abilities. 

 

Knocking on the end door which was clearly marked ‘ _ IMPERIUS TESTING’ _ , he heard a voice inside instruct him to enter. He was pretty sure he knew from their accent who would be testing him.

 

“Ah, Bang!” greeted Ronald Weasley. Chan internally sighed in relief, realising that this meant he wouldn’t have Weasley for the practical module again that year. 

 

“Weasley. Good to see you again,” Chan greeted him genuinely, shaking the other man’s hand before placing his wand on a table nearby, which was a requirement for the test. Eyes closed, he waited for the onslaught.

 

“Imperio!” Weasley commanded. Chan felt the calming sensation wash over his mind, but did not relax, as much as the feeling willed him to. And then, in his thoughts, he heard a whispered command.  _ “Jump onto the chair.” _

 

_ “No,”  _ Chan refused the voice, restraining his legs from moving as they wanted to.  _ “I will not be controlled.” _

 

_ “Jump. Onto. The. Desk.” _

 

_ “NO!”  _ he yelled back mentally, forcibly pushing the voice out of his head. Weasley stumbled slightly on the spot.

 

“You’re good, Bang,” he praised. “I think we can safely say that you’ve passed the Imperius portion of the assessment. Not that I’d expect anything less from you, mate.”

 

Chan held back a wince at the informality Weasley showed to a man he barely knew. Although he should hardly be surprised; the redhead of the infamous ‘Golden Trio’ was hardly renowned for his subtle graces.

 

“How’s the wife and kid then, Bang? I hear your son makes quite the impression on high society.”

 

“Oh, Junhyuk just gets bored, is all,” Chan explained, a little confused by Weasley’s sudden interest in his personal life. “He’s going to be doing more lessons with his tutors at home instead of attending Siyeon’s social functions from now on.”

 

“Ah, don’t look so ashamed of him, mate. He’s a growing lad and the worse I’ve heard he’s done was turn some woman’s hat into a turkey. Hardly so bad as inflating your aunt in third year like Harry did,” Weasley reasoned. 

 

“Yes, yes, that is very tr-”

 

He didn’t hear the command the second time, meaning that Weasley had learnt the curse non-verbally, but the feeling was just the same.

 

_ “Sit on the floor,”  _ he was commanded, and he fought his legs as they tried to buckle beneath him.

 

_ “Get out of my head, Weasley,” _ he retorted in his mind, pushing back at the unwelcome intrusion into his consciousness, shoving Weasley out. 

 

“Nice one, Bang. A lot of people failed the sneak attack,” Weasley congratulated him. “My wife suggested that we test how people react to an unexpected strike from the curse, as that’s how it’d be in real life.”

 

“She makes an excellent point,” Chan admitted. “Is that actually all, this time?”

 

“Yes, you can get your wand back now,” Weasley confirmed. “You’re off for testing in room…” he paused, looking down at a sheet, “Room sixty. Enjoy the practical, hope you qualify this time.”

 

“Well I’m not against you, so I just might!” Chan joked, turning to walk away.

 

“Your examiner is the best of our newly qualified lot, even beat me in a duel a few times; I wouldn’t be so sure of yourself,” Weasley warned, laughing as the door closed behind Chan.

 

Not exactly a reassuring statement, but Chan was still utterly set on making the three minute mark so that he could train for the NATF. 

 

Room 60 was only a few doors down, and Chan waited outside, hearing that someone else’s examination was still happening inside. After a matter of mere seconds, however, a mousy haired woman stormed out, slamming the door behind her and power walking away. Clearly  _ someone  _ hadn’t passed her assessment. 

 

Chan waited a moment, then rapped his knuckles three times against the wooden door.

 

“Come in!” a male voice instructed, an  _ all too familiar _ male voice. Chan’s heart sank with dread, ending up somewhere around his toes. He recognised that voice and, as much as he wished his suspicions were wrong, they were confirmed as he turned the handle and entered the testing room.

 

“Chan,” Auror Lee greeted him with a wide smile. “How absolutely lovely to see you!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy valentines day slash friday depending on your timezone!! i'm gonna try and update this every fortnight, so feel free to subscribe <33 let me know what you thought of this chapter in the comments and/or on twitter!! just made one today, it's @woominchans, same as on here <33
> 
> thank you for reading!!


	3. The Assessments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Bang was straight, Minho would eat his hat, and that hat was expensive.

Of all the people he could possibly have been partnered with for this assessment, out of an auror force at least four-hundred strong, Chan had still managed to be partnered with  _ Minho _ . At this point, he’d have been less annoyed with the news that he had to face Harry  _ Bloody  _ Potter than Auror Lee. Sure, he’d be knocked out of the fight in seconds without a hope of qualifying for the NATF, but at least Potter didn’t infuriate him in the unique way that Lee always seemed to. 

 

“Lee,” Chan greeted him curtly. “A pleasure as always,” he lied, not an ounce of sincerity in his tone. 

 

“Oh Chan, surely you can fake  _ excitement _ a little better than that,” Minho chided him. “In fact, you must be quite the expert at ‘faking it’ after all these years; you do have a son, after all.”

 

Chan tensed up, glowering at the other man. “What’s that supposed to mean,  _ Minho _ ?” he demanded, but Lee only smirked in response, offering him no explanation for the confusing taunts.

 

“So, hoping to qualify for the NATF this year, are we?” Minho asked, still smiling at Chan in a way that unnerved him, as he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it.

 

“I, um, yes,” Chan replied in an uncharacteristic jumbling of words, his mouth dry. Unrelated to his distracted state of mind, Minho was stretching in what Chan assumed was preparation for their fight. His arms stretched up so high that a sliver of his toned stomach was visible, not that Chan was looking, not that he would even care to look. Somehow, however, Minho seemed to catch him looking, which was odd seeing as he  _ wasn’t _ , the other man smiling knowingly in his infuriating way. It was if Minho knew something about him that even he himself wasn’t privy to, which was quite the disconcerting feeling.

 

“Ready, then?” Lee asked smugly. “Or would you rather I stretch a bit more for you?” 

 

The double meaning that the auror seemed to be trying to imply, given the look on his face, was lost on him.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Oh, I think you know.”

 

“I really don’t,” Chan protested.

 

“If you insist,” Minho acquiesced, not sounding as if he believed him in the slightest. “Well, anyway, onwards!”

 

“To what?” Chan, asked, still distracted, before he realised. “Oh, right, test, yes.”

 

“Where on earth is your mind right now, Chan?” Minho teased, his personality annoying enough to snap him out of his odd headspace.

 

“Nowhere! I’m completely in the present, thank you very much,” Chan snapped, taking a step backwards when he realised how close Lee had drawn to him while they’d been talking.

 

“Very well,” Minho backed down, though still with a mischievous glint to his eyes. “Shall we?” he asked, gesturing to their respective ‘starting places’ marked on the floor at opposite ends of the room. 

 

Taking up an entire wall of the room was a large timer, one conjured with what Chan recognised as his own projection charm, which he’d submitted anonymously to the Experimental Charms department two months ago. He was somewhat surprised that it had been approved so quickly, even with the pages of notes he’d supplied along with its incantation ( _ proiectura magna _ ) and a diagram of the wand movement required. He wondered where the actual clock being projected was.

 

“We shall,” he replied, moving to the red marker labelled ‘testee’, Lee walking over to its blue counterpart, labelled ‘tester’. 

 

“On the count of three then, Chan,” Minho told him, not breaking eye contact as he continued. “Three… two…  _ ONE _ !” 

 

With the last yelled word, Chan could see the timer begin from the corner of his eye. He was otherwise preoccupied, however, by the highly trained auror now stalking towards him. Though a single spell had yet to be cast, chills went down Chan’s spine. Auror Lee’s demeanor had completely changed, his posture adjusted from slouching to predatory. He couldn’t deny that the sight was somewhat intoxicating, but forced himself to remain focused. 

 

In his youthful days as a champion under-seventeen’s dueller, Chan would already have dived headfirst into conflict. Now, at thirty, he was somewhat rusty, the yearly assessments the only times he got to fight. Minho was, by Weasley’s testimony, the best auror in the junior department, so it would be no easy achievement to last three minutes against him in battle. Were it not for Weasley’s warning, he would likely have underestimated him, and a fatal mistake it would have been.

 

Wordlessly, Chan sent a stunner at him, the first spark of an actual clash between them. As easily as breathing, Minho ducked out of the way of the charm’s trajectory, letting it impact harmlessly with a wall. The room itself was warded against all spells, meaning that anything that hit a wall, or the ceiling for that matter, was simply absorbed. The floor was modifiable to a degree, a fact Chan had come to learn three years previously when his tester had made it grow tendrils which held him in place.

 

Returning fire while running towards him, Minho yelled “ _ Paulo cæcus _ !”, a temporary blinding curse that Chan’s hasty shield charm thankfully deflected, the bright white beam absorbed by the ceiling when it bounced off. Chan was forced to not only parry Minho magically, but physically, as he dodged away from rather muggle ways of fighting that he hadn’t been expecting. 

 

_ “Magna parete!”  _ Chan shouted desperately, the large wall he conjured only allowing him ten seconds to catch his bearings before Minho managed to dispel it. It would have been less had Chan not used one of his own spells in the knowledge that Lee wouldn’t immediately know how to get rid of it.

 

“Impressive, Bang,” Minho praised, the two of them beginning to circle each other, both waiting for the other to strike first. “I haven’t seen that one before, where did you find it?”

 

“Family library,” Chan lied, unsuccessfully trying a non-verbal leg-locking curse on his adversary. Again, Minho didn’t even bother to shield, leaping out of the way effortlessly, his movements fluid and natural. 

 

“Ah, the famous pureblood ‘family libraries’,” Minho replied, “Rather an unfair advantage, don’t you think?”

 

“Not really,” Chan countered, sidestepping a stunner. “There’s plenty of other spells out there if you bother to read into it. Why, Hogwarts only teaches us the latin spells; you’d think given its location that they’d at least slip a little Gaelic into the curriculum.”

 

“Such as, Mr Intellectual?” Minho queried, cocking his head. “Possibly something along the lines of…  _ tuisleachadh? _ ” he continued, waving his wand with the last word and sending a jet of white light straight towards Chan who, in his shock, nearly didn’t shield the tripping jinx in time.

 

“Surprised, Chan? I can be clever as well as pretty, you know,” Minho teased him, winking and then taking advantage of Chan’s consequent distractedness to send a wordless spell which he failed to dodge. Luckily for him, all it did was paint his nails hot pink, not that he was all too pleased with that result.

 

Though laughing at Chan’s new style, Minho still pointed out “If that had been something deadlier you could be seriously incapacitated right now, Bang; keep your guard up.

 

In lieu of a response, Chan shot back with another Gaelic spell,  _ ceangaltach ròpan,  _ a binding spell which sent ropes towards the auror, bindings which unfortunately bounced off his well timed  _ protego _ . At least, Chan noted with no small satisfaction, he had provided an attack strong enough that Minho had bothered to shield against it.

 

“Kinky as that is, Channie darling, let’s save the tying me up for a later date,” Minho joked, making Chan choke a little on nothing but air. 

 

At least, Chan  _ thought  _ that he was joking. Hoped, at least. The thought wasn’t appealing to him, no, not in the slightest. He didn’t even like men. “Hilarious, Lee. You’re quite the comedian.”

 

_ “Tarantallegra!”  _

 

The curse hit Chan square in the chest, his shield charm too late to stop it but managing, at least, to stop the stunner fired immediately after.  _ “Finite incantatem,” _ he ordered, stopping his legs dancing wildly.

 

“You’re quite the dancer, sweetheart,” Minho jibed. “You should teach me some moves sometime.”

 

The timer was at two minutes fifty. Ten seconds more and he would have finally qualified for the NATF. “I’m sure you’ve plenty of moves without my guidance, Lee,” he replied, sending a  _ petrificus totalus _ at him which only missed him by a fraction of an inch, even when he dodged. 

 

“Wouldn’t  _ you  _ like to know?” Minho retorted flirtily, though the near miss with the full body-bind curse seemed to have only had the unwelcome effect of making him even more focused on their duel. When Chan took another crack at him with the impediment jinx, Minho’s shield was up before the word  _ impedimenta _ had even fully left his lips. His reactions were whip fast, even more so when he focused more on the duel and less on fake flirting with Chan. 

 

Chan  _ assumed  _ it was fake, hoped it was; the other man must be delusional to think he was anything other than straight as a ruler. Yet, although Minho was putting more thought into their fight than before, Chan could see fairly quickly that that did  _ not _ mean that he was going to stop flirting, as he had previously thought.

 

“Now, Chan sweetie, I can hardly let  _ you _ upstage _ me _ with the kinky spells, now can I?” Minho teased, the sentence putting Chan on edge, tensing for whatever the hell it was that Lee had in mind.

 

He didn’t have to wonder for long.

 

Lee sent a stunner slightly to one side, making him step away from it to the right. What Chan didn’t realise, however, was that Minho had deliberately missed to distract him from the fact that he was stepping into the path of the spell fired immediately after. Too focused for a split second on the  _ stupefy _ , his guard was let down and he didn’t shield the second spell in time.

 

“ _ Ingens cavea!”  _ Minho shouted, a fraction of a second after his silent stunner. With his words, a cage sprung up around Chan from nothing, the space so limited that his arms were pinned to his sides. He couldn’t raise his wand to defend himself, especially as it had fallen to the ground when the cage appeared, and his wandless shielding capacities were limited at best. Besides, he was too distracted by the self-satisfied grin on Minho’s face as he stalked towards him to even attempt it.

 

He could, however, prolong his imminent failure slightly longer as he wandlessly summoned Lee’s wand with a muttered “ _ Expelliarmus _ .”

 

Although this would have in no way saved him from death were it a real battle, it bought him a few more seconds as Minho picked up both their wands from the floor and then, finally, pointed his at Chan.  _ “Stupefy,” _ he incanted, bringing an end to the assessment as Chan’s world faded to black.

 

\-----------------------

 

Minho vanished the cage, catching Chan’s unconscious form before he could hit the floor and carefully laying him down. Bending over to revive him, he noticed just how peaceful the older man looked like this, his face free of the tension that he obviously carried with him each day. It was a good look on him, and Minho felt almost guilty breaking him away from it. 

 

_ “Renervate,”  _ he murmured reluctantly.

 

As Chan’s eyes fluttered gently open, Minho noticed how his eyes didn’t go first to the timer, which was frozen on the reading of 03:09.94, but to the face of the man above him. At that point, more than ever, he was sure that Bang’s illusion of heterosexuality was just that: an illusion. His breath audibly caught in his throat as Minho leant slightly closer with the intention of helping him up, though he held onto the moment a little longer when he saw the effect he was having on him. 

 

Chan’s eyes flickered from Minho’s eyes to his mouth, to the exposed skin at his collar and then back to his lips. He seemed to be having difficulty forming coherent thoughts at their close proximity, breath hitching again when Minho grabbed his hand to pull him up from the floor. 

 

When they were standing, Chan didn’t drop his hand immediately as he’d expected him too, still caught up in a trance, seemingly. They were still very close to one another, Chan’s head tilted up slightly so that he could meet his eyes. “Well done,” Minho finally said, breaking the tense silence.

 

“For what?” Chan asked softly, still looking only at Minho and nothing other than Minho. He clearly had yet to see his score, dazed as he was.

 

“You passed, idiot,” Minho told him, amused that he hadn’t noticed at once. “You’d have seen that for yourself if you weren’t so busy getting lost in my eyes, stunningly beautiful as they are.”

 

That, it seemed, was what it took to snap him out of his momentary lapse from his Mr Straight Guy persona. 

 

“Great, thank you for your time,” he said politely, shaking the hand he must’ve suddenly realised he was still holding, dropping it like it scalded him after only a second. “I’ll be off now,” he said hurriedly, making his way to the door faster than a rich middle class white woman during her morning power-walk session.

 

“Bang!” Minho called after him.

 

“Yes, Auror Lee?” he replied, so uptight and professional that his demeanor mere seconds ago seemed worlds away.

 

“Your wand?”

 

“Oh, yes, that,” Chan replied embarrassedly, rushing back to snatch it from him before running from the room like a hare with a greyhound in hot pursuit. 

 

If Bang was straight, Minho would eat his hat, and that hat was expensive. 

 

\----------------------- 

 

Due to the fact that he would have to take some preliminary tests to assess his intellect, Junhyuk’s first official day at school wouldn’t be until the following day. Instead, his mother was taking him there after the school’s official opening hours, as Dr Lee had kindly offered to supervise the three tests in his own time after school. Siyeon was to stay there as well, because even though Dr Lee seemed to be the nicest man she’d ever met, she was not willing to leave her child in the sole company of anyone, especially someone she barely knew.

 

They arrived with a pop in the alley, making their way inside the school. It was 3:35, five minutes after the children were let out, so there were still multiple cars parked outside and children running amok all over the grass out front. The bratty child who had shown them around, though for the life of her Siyeon couldn’t recall the kid’s name, waved at them as she ran past to a large car where her guardian waited. When they reached the reception, they were waved through after signing the visitor’s log. Dr Lee was waiting for them there.

 

“Mrs Bang, Junhyuk, it’s wonderful to see you both again,” he greeted them, reaching out to shake Siyeon’s hand. The action would have been condemned in upper-class pureblood society, where handshakes between men and women were hardly in the complex etiquette one must follow. She understood, however, that his actions were that of a muggle who knew nothing of such things, and accepted his hand. 

 

“And you, Dr Lee. Do please call me Siyeon,” Siyeon replied with a sweet smile. “Junhyuk has been quite hyperactive today looking forward to these tests.”

 

“Looking forward to tests? You’re a man after my own heart, Junhyuk,” Dr Lee replied, grinning at the child as the three of them walked down the corridor. “Well, you’ll be taking them in the classroom from last time. Your mother and I will sit in the courtyard area just outside as to not disturb you.”

 

“Thank you,” Junhyuk replied politely, not really showing much emotion. Nobody would have known that he had been practically bouncing off the walls all day with excitement. Siyeon was used to this and placed her hand on his shoulder reassuringly as they stopped outside the classroom. She wasn’t much use when it came to comforting her confusing son, nobody was, but she tried.

 

“You’re sure that you want to do all three tests today, Junhyuk?” Dr Lee double checked. “It’s not usual protocol, but your mother insisted that you were up for it.”

 

Junhyuk nodded determinedly. “I want to start school as soon as possible,” he told him, his tone allowing no room for debate. “Besides, I tend to find tests easy.”

 

“Well then,” Dr Lee replied. “I’ll get you set up.”

 

Five minutes after they had left Junhyuk inside with the first test, which was supposed to take half an hour, Siyeon found her polite conversation with Dr Lee interrupted by Junhyuk opening the door from the classroom into the courtyard. 

 

“I’ve finished,” Junhyuk told them bluntly. “I would wait, but I’m already bored and I’ve checked it twice.

 

“Junhyuk, many kids your age don’t even manage to  _ finish _ the test in that timespan, yet alone do so twenty-five minutes early. You can’t possibly expect me to believe that y-” Dr Lee was cut off as Junhyuk handed him the completed sheet of maths assessment questions, each one neatly filled out and appearing, at least at a first glance, to be correct. “Oh.”

 

“I could do stuff at that level with ease when I was  _ four _ , Dr Lee,” Junhyuk reasoned. “Is that really the standard that most my age aspire to? That’s pretty depressing, if you ask me.”

 

“Well,” Dr Lee replied, more than slightly in awe of the kid’s obvious intelligence. “Would you like a break before moving on to the spelling and reading comprehension tests?”

 

“I’m quite alright,” he answered. “Shall we get on with it?”

 

“Very well. Junhyuk, do you mind your mother sitting in on these next two? I need to be there to read out the spelling questions for you and to listen to you read out loud.”

 

“That doesn’t bother me in the slightest, Dr Lee.”

 

Siyeon watched on proudly as Junhyuk read aloud from the set text, his advanced knowledge clear as he pronounced every word with ease. He hadn’t made a single error in his numeracy and spelling tests, his reading clearly one more thing that came naturally to him. She’d no doubt that he was headed straight to Ravenclaw; if she hadn’t quite the vivid recollection of him coming into the world, she’d have sworn that Rowena herself had somehow birthed him.

 

_ “And so the children decided that they liked the dog much more, making the cat leave in an angry huff,”  _ Junhyuk finished, putting down the piece of paper he had been reading from. “What idiotic children. Cats are far superior in every way; if I had a dog I’d let it run away, and good riddance that would be. As for an ‘angry huff’, has this author ever met a cat? They are distinguished far beyond such things,” he ranted, ending with a hopeful look at Siyeon.

 

“I know that look, Junhyuk,” she sighed. “And no, no matter how much you know about cats you are not getting one until your eleventh birthday.”

 

“Why then specifically?” Dr Lee enquired, puzzled.

 

“No reason!” both mother and son said in sync, making him even more confused.

 

“Moving on!” Siyeon hurried to brush over their near miss. “Junhyuk is good to start now, I assume?”

 

Obviously deciding to drop it, Dr Lee nodded. “I imagine he’d do well to skip a few years, but we should let him mingle with his peers before taking any action in that regard. He’s been somewhat socially isolated, I gather?”

 

“Yes, that makes sense, Doctor,” Siyeon agreed and then, turning to Junhyuk, said “Let’s get you back home, then!”

 

“Thank you, Dr Lee,” Junhyuk spoke without any prompting from his mother to show manners, another thing which set him apart from other kids his age. He was altogether far too collected.

 

Siyeon hurried her son out of the school, eager to get away from the teacher’s questions so that she could think of a plausible backstory that should encompass them all.

 

\----------------------- 

 

Woojin was three and a half hours into an eight hour shift. 1-9pm at St Mungo's was something straight out of hell, as much as he loved being a healer. He could be thankful, at least, that it wasn’t another overnighter. He was covering for a healer off sick from the Bodily Transfiguration department; usually he was on the emergency room staff specialising in ‘muggle injuries/conditions’, as he had a degree in muggle medical science as well as in healing.

 

At that moment, however, he was trying to figure out how the hell he could reverse the condition of a man who had sprouted thick weeds over every inch of his body. “How did you manage this?” he questioned, truly perplexed.

 

“It wasn’t me, it was some bitch,” he growled, spittle flying from out of the nettles covering his mouth. “Dumb slut couldn’t take a compliment.”

 

Woojin had half a mind to leave him in his condition, if not curse him further. “So, you catcalled a woman and she retaliated?” he clarified.

 

“Yeah. Some broads are just too sensitive these days,” he complained, crossing his green arms petulantly.

 

“What exactly did you say to her, and how  _ exactly _ did she respond?” Woojin asked through gritted teeth. The man was truly asking for a slap. 

 

“Well, she was wearing figure hugging robes like a common whore,” he elaborated. His eye twitched as he steadfastly refrained from cursing the horrible man. “So I said ‘your ass is grass and I’m gonna mow it’, and the stupid bitch went and cursed me. Like I said, some people just don’t know when to take a compliment”

 

“What was the curse, sir, if you could please try and remember,” he asked with forced politeness, multiple curses far worse than the man’s current affliction running through his mind.

 

“I think it was  _ cutis herba _ ,” he replied. “Do you guys have a bar here? I need a drink.”

 

“This is a  _ hospital _ , sir.”

 

“So?” he questioned in his privileged, ignorant, whiny voice.

 

“So,  _ no,  _ we don’t have a bar,” he snarled. “Anyway, I think I’ve figured out the counter-curse, shame as that may be as I was  _ so _ enjoying our conversation.  _ Finis herba _ .”

 

The grass vanished from his skin, revealing a pointy-nosed, weak-chinned man with watery eyes and a pallid complexion who was giving his what appeared to be his attempt at a seductive smile. “Well, if you were enjoying our talk, perhaps we could continue it at my mansion after your shift?” he leered, finishing his spiel with a wink. 

 

“It was sarcasm, genius. Now get out of my hospital room; I doubt you’d want to bang a muggleborn anyhow,” he ordered him with a glare that Medusa would be envious of. At his words, he adopted a look of utter revulsion.

 

“I’ll be off then. I can’t believe I let such scum near my affections,” he sneered.

 

“Wait!” Woojin called after him, suddenly realising something as he made to stride out of the hospital room.

 

“Begging me won’t work, mudblood,” he practically spat.

 

“Okay, one: you’re getting a ban from St Mungo's for at least a year for that slur,” Woojin retorted. “And two, I remember you now without the weeds all over you; you’re lightbulb guy! Do tell me how you managed to get that up there.”

 

He let out a noise like a chicken being punched, and scurried out of the room with his face postbox red. 

 

Next, Woojin moved on to a mild mannered woman who had somehow replaced her ears with teacups in a spell testing accident. With no exact curse to find the counter for, his work was cut out for him far more so than with Mr Prejudiced Lightbulb-Kink. Working out a solution took him right up until his 5pm break, by which point he  _ just _ managed to reverse the effects in time for him to run off to the hospital cafeteria.

 

While for most catering jobs house elves beat humans out in every way, making Hyunjin’s cooking aspirations rather difficult, house elf magic interfered with the treatments at St Mungo’s and so he managed to get hired there. 

 

Speaking of his boyfriend— Woojin smiled at the sight Hyunjin rushing to greet him as he entered the cafeteria. As there were two chefs and not all that many customers, he was able to schedule his breaks around Woojin’s as his were far more flexible than a healer’s strict schedule.

 

Both of them sat down at a table in the corner, well away from the only other people in the room: two old women who sat knitting while sipping from large bowls of tomato soup. Woojin greeted his boyfriend with a chaste kiss, Hyunjin grabbing his hand before he could flip off the more ancient of the old women, who had tutted loudly and disapprovingly at their small display of affection. 

 

“Now, now, love. Just ignore the bigoted old fart, she’ll be dead of old age soon enough anyway,” Hyunjin reasoned loud enough that said woman let out a scandalised gasp as he pressed a kiss to the hand he still held between his own. “How has your shift been so far?”

 

Woojin explained how grass-guy had turned out to be the lightbulb man he’d told him about a few weeks ago and complained about the onslaught of rude patients he’d been having that day. With a sigh, he finished his rant and smiled tiredly at his boyfriend. “And you, my love? How have the public been today?” he enquired, making sure to give Hyunjin his full attention no matter how tired he may feel. 

 

“Well, Elianna DeMiefe was back at it again today,” he bemoaned, “And by ‘at it’ I mean she was trying to convince me that she was the woman to cure me of, and I quote, my ‘silly queer phase’. I was just trying to serve her her mashed potatoes and she kept offering to take me on a romantic cruise of the Caribbean.”

 

“Well, if those were the same mashed potatoes I tried the other week, I don’t blame the girl for stalling,” Woojin teased, trying to make light of the situation, making Hyunjin roll his eyes and giggle while faux-glaring at his lover. It made for quite the look.

 

DeMiefe’s interest in Hyunjin was no new occurrence. At first, they’d both hoped that telling her he was, in fact, gay and in a relationship with one of the healers would cull her advances. Sadly, that was no such deterrent. Woojin suspected that her interest was less in Hyunjin himself than the considerable family fortune he would be set to inherit if he ‘saw the error of his ways’, led a straight lifestyle and got reinstated to the family line. 

 

A little over two years ago, Hyunjin had come out to his parents. By no coincidence, he had also been blasted from his family tree, stripped of his inheritance and kicked out of the Hwang household at that exact same time. The memory of that day was still fresh in Woojin’s mind, every detail still raw.

 

_ West London was in the midst of a thunderstorm the likes of which hadn’t been seen in years. Flashes of lightning illuminated the sky with increasing frequency, the close following of thunder indicating just how close they were to Woojin’s family home. His mother Sohee’s medical profession coupled with his father’s legacy of old family money had allowed for quite the impressive house, surrounded by a large garden with a tall fence all enclosing it to keep the dog in. Said garden was completely obscured from view at that moment by a combination of the pouring rain and the general darkness outside; it was 11pm after all. _

 

_ The family of three were staying up to listen to the storm together, an activity which was something of a tradition when the weather was that bad. Another crack sounded, all of them logically assuming that it was lightning and not a man apparating onto their porch until said man began pounding on their door. By the time Wooshik Kim had wrenched it open, the poor man standing there was completely sodden, his blonde hair plastered against his face, the rain streaming down his face masking his tears. _

 

_ “Jinnie!” Woojin cried, pushing past his parents to embrace his shaking boyfriend and pull him into the warmth of the hallway. “Darling, what on earth happened to you? Your face!” he exclaimed, noticing for the first time the bruise covering his left cheek. “I’m going to kill whoever did that to you, I swear to fucking God.” _

 

_ “Woojinnie, let’s get your boyfriend warm in front of the fire so he’s less likely to get hypothermia while you quiz him,” Sohee reasoned with her son, leading the two of them back to the living room and steering Hyunjin into the chair by the fire. Only once Woojin had performed a drying charm and the still shivering blonde was wrapped up in a massive blanket did Sohee let Woojin continue with his questions. _

 

_ “Baby, let me heal that for you,” Woojin said, cupping Hyunjin’s face with one hand as he performed a series of healing charms with the other until the angry-looking bruise was no more. “Please tell me what happened to you, love,” he pleaded. _

 

_ Hyunjin finally spoke for the first time since his unexpected arrival. “I told my parents,” he told them, those four words conveying all that Woojin needed to realise why his boyfriend had shown up out of nowhere, beaten and alone.  _

 

_ The Hwang family were one of the oldest pureblood families, his parents so horrifically traditional that they’d threatened to disown him when he was sorted into Hufflepuff instead of Slytherin. If it had been Gryffindor, Woojin had not the slightest of doubts that they would have indeed disowned their eleven year old child without looking back. Instead, it had taken this, another thing that Hyunjin couldn’t change about himself but that they deemed ‘wrong’. _

 

_ “Oh honey,” Sohee sighed, her heart clearly breaking for her son’s boyfriend. “They don’t deserve you.” _

 

_ “You’re welcome here for as long as you want or need to be, Hyunjin,” Wooshik added. “From the way Woojin speaks of you, we’ll be having a veritable saint staying in our home.” _

 

_ At that, Hyunjin managed a small laugh, giving his boyfriend a weak but loving smile. “Thank you so much, all of you. I’m sorry for imposing,” he apologised. _

 

_ “You could never be an imposition,” Woojin replied with no room for argument in his voice. “Now, do you want some tea? It’ll make things seem slightly less bad, I assure you.” _

 

_ “I could go for tea.” _

 

“Woojinnie, where’s your mind gone?” Hyunjin asked, jolting Woojin out of his reminiscence. “You looked like you were miles away.”

 

“Sorry love, I was just remembering when you moved in with my parents and I,” Woojin explained, reaching out to hold his boyfriend’s hand and smiling fondly. “I’m so lucky to have you.”

 

“Don’t be getting all soppy on me now, Healer Kim,” Hyunjin chided teasingly. “You can’t make me tear up at 5pm, that’s just not allowed.”

 

“Anything in there to distract me?” he asked, gesturing to the tupperware container that his boyfriend had brought with him to the table. Hyunjin knew by then that Woojin only ate full meals at home but loved when he brought in baking for their shared break-times.

 

“But of course,” Hyunjin replied, feigning offense that that would even be a question. “I made Danishes.”

 

“I knew there was a reason I keep you around,” Woojin joked, stealing another light kiss as he reached across to snag a pastry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!! If you wanna hit me up on twitter, my @ is @woominchans, same as on here. Kudos and comments are, as ever, much appreciated!! <3


	4. Thinking Straight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m not like most eight-year-olds, as I’m sure you’re aware,” he retorted, a slight smug smile tugging at his lips. 
> 
> “Yes, you’re certainly right there Junhyuk,” Felix admitted, laughing.

“And does anyone know where this country is on the map?” Felix asked, looking around the classroom as he clicked his powerpoint on to show an assortment of images titled ‘New Zealand’. He was met only by an array of children pointedly averting their gaze as to avoid eye contact. “Nobody?”

 

There was only one child who wasn’t making an obvious effort to not look at him, although he still wasn’t. Junhyuk had a large book propped open on his desk and he was perusing it instead of paying any attention to the geography lesson that Felix was trying to teach. Although the kid was new, Felix felt that it was still important that he understand that ignoring his teacher wouldn’t get him anywhere in life.

 

“Junhyuk,” Felix said pointedly, making him look up at last from his reading. “Do you know the answer?”

 

Naturally, Junhyuk would be embarrassed at zoning out, would apologise and then-

 

“It’s in the bottom right, with Australia above and to the left,” Junhyuk replied without even looking at the map. Somehow, miraculously, the child had still been paying attention to him despite reading at the same time. In addition, he also answered a question correctly and with complete ease that the rest of the class couldn’t even touch. 

 

“Well done, Junhyuk!” he praised, moving swiftly on to the next slide and trying not to focus on the jealous glances other kids were shooting the new student.

 

Ten minutes later, as the class enthusiastically coloured in print-outs of world maps in a variety of hues, Felix was walking around the room and passed the desk in the back left corner that Junhyuk had picked out. The book was neatly in the corner of his desk with the boy’s pencil case on top of it as he methodically and neatly coloured in his copy of the map. Upon further observation, he noticed that Junhyuk had even added a key and labelled the continents in black biro. 

 

What kind of child was this? 

 

A fiercely intelligent one, that was for sure; the book he had been so avidly reading was ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem’ by Simon Singh. Felix himself had only read it a few years ago during his degree. Surely the child couldn’t possibly hope to comprehend such a work, even as well as it was written.

 

As to not draw attention to Junhyuk even more so than he already had, Felix waited until the break to ask him about it. He didn’t even have to tell him to hang back, as he had opted to dither by the door leading to the playground instead of actually going outside; understandably, he was clearly nervous about his first interaction with his fellow classmates.

 

“Junhyuk?” 

 

Junhyuk’s head jerked up, as he must have been lost in thought. “Yes, Dr Lee?” he enquired politely.

 

“That book you were reading,” he paused, wondering how to word his question without sounding patronising. He didn’t want his new student to hate him, after all.

 

“Oh that? It’s very interesting, though I think Singh skips over a lot of the depth of the theory to make it more reader-accessible,” Junhyuk responded critically. “It’s more of a novel about the journey of Andrew Wiles than actually a comprehensive explanation of the theorem itself.”

 

Felix had to make a conscious effort to stop his jaw dropping. “I, um, I quite agree with your assessment,” he wondered. This child, this eight-year-old  _ child _ had understood the book more than many people his own age could ever hope to. 

 

“You know,” Junhyuk remarked, “I wonder how Fermat’s proof actually went. Obviously it couldn’t have involved ellipticals, so how he went about it is quite the mystery.”

 

“Why did you choose that to read?” Felix questioned. “It’s hardly usual reading material for an eight-year-old, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

 

“I’m not like most eight-year-olds, as I’m sure  _ you’re _ aware,” he retorted, a slight smug smile tugging at his lips. 

 

“Yes, you’re certainly right there Junhyuk,” Felix admitted, laughing. “Anyway, why aren’t you outside?”

 

Junhyuk’s smile, small as it had originally been, dropped into nonexistence. “I get on better with adults. Kids feel threatened by me,” he explained, distancing himself from them in a likely deliberate choice of the word ‘kids’, even though he himself would be technically defined as such.                                                                         

 

“I understand that all too well, but you really should at least try talking to them at lunch,” Felix reasoned. His heart went out to the child, memories of his own school days which could be best summarised by the word ‘isolation’ rushing to the forefront of his mind. At that age, and in fact all through upper school as well, all he wanted to do was hide from the world. 

 

Aged eleven, he’d made the mistake of bringing his favourite book to school, the book his father had gifted him for his tenth birthday and the last present his father had ever given him. That day had ended with him crying as he pulled the book from a puddle in the school playground, a large group of his classmates in one large circle of taunts around him.

 

“Maybe,” Junhyuk replied noncommittally. Before Felix could say much more, children began flooding back into the classroom as the school bell rang to signal the end of break.

 

“Okay everyone!” Felix addressed the class enthusiastically, gesturing wildly as he spoke. “We’re going to be learning some history next, followed by mathematics. How exciting!”

 

Junhyuk was the only one who didn’t let out a dread-imbued groan at his words.

 

\----------------------- 

 

Meanwhile, Siyeon was at a tea party craving the sweet release of death as Marianne Chase harped on about how society’s standards were slipping with the ‘amount of mudbloods in the ministry’.

 

There were five of them in total, Siyeon herself included, at the gathering Marianne was hosting. Along with them was Cynthia Infanze, Viola Bealder and Estrella Monford. Their little group consisted of the highest standing families in Wizarding Britain, bar Viola as she was American but still from an old enough family line that she was accepted there. 

 

Marianne, their host, was a petite, blonde haired woman with starkly angular features and piercing blue eyes that always seemed to be judging the recipient of her gaze. To be fair, they almost definitely were. She was somewhat pretty in a sharp sort of way, but her personality far overshadowed whatever sliver of good looks she may have possessed, the ugliness of her heart shining through into her face and twisting it.

 

Cynthia, on the other hand, was just plain ugly. Her horrible temperament probably didn’t help matters, but genetics had not fared her well by any means. Built like a rake, she was near-entirely flat chested, with large, spelled black curls which appeared to be trying to distract from her otherwise unremarkable appearance. Her eyes were a pale, watery brown, her nose rather hooked and what there was of her thin lips was smeared a garish red. The fact that she was sitting next to Estrella just made her look even more unsightly in contrast.

 

Estrella, like all of the Monford family, had stunningly beautiful features with luscious black tresses which put Cynthia’s to shame, ivory skin and eyes like sapphires. The Monfords, like the Bangs, were one of few English pureblood families who made a concerted effort to prevent inbreeding. 

 

Viola had been horrified at the state of Wizarding Britain when she arrived there, having moved across the pond for her Husband Aaron’s new position in the Department of International Magical Relations. 

 

Were the Bealders not such an influential family in America that they still held some considerable power in the United Kingdom, Viola would most certainly not have been accepted by the high class as she had been, albeit grudgingly. Along with blood purist views, much of the old families were rather racist, most certainly looking down on Viola for being mixed race. Siyeon herself was only accepted due to the fact that her family had moved over two hundred years before, fleeing a magical war in Korea.

 

In contrast to the levels of racism in American non-magical society, American magical folk were far more progressive in every way than Britain, hence Viola being the only one asides from Siyeon who wasn’t a blood purist at their little gathering. The two of them often exchanged subtly uncomfortable glances during conversations with the other women, and would complain to each other in private. The conversation at that point had definitely steered to uncomfortable.

 

Cynthia, Estrella and Marianne were snootily commenting on Arthur Weasley’s latest endeavour in the ministry: the Muggle Memory Act. He was trying to make the illegal use of  _ obliviate _ on muggles punishable by a life sentence in Azkaban rather than a mere six months as it was at that point. It made sense to Siyeon; it was completely unethical and should only be condoned to preserve the Statute of Secrecy. The cases Weasley was bringing up were those in which people, mostly men, had used the charm to do what they liked with muggle women and then make them forget it to absolve themselves of consequences. 

 

Viola rolled her eyes at Siyeon as Cynthia whined. “Muggle filth don’t deserve rights any more than those of common animals. In fact, my siamese cats are far more worthy,” she postulated, sniffing. “Hector and Maurice are prize specimens; I’d get far more galleons for them than a muggle if I owned one.”

 

“If only the ministry allowed muggle slaves,” Marianne sighed. “That’s their place, at our feet.”

 

Siyeon thought of Felix, how he’d been nicer to her than any other man she had ever met. The three bigots before her were not worth a single percent of what he was. She could tell that from just two meetings with him.

 

“You don’t think that enslaving people is wrong?” she queried, incredulous at their level of prejudice.

 

“Oh Siyeon, darling,” Estrella tittered, her laughter like a peal of bells. She looked and sounded rather like a Disney princess, deceiving as her beauty was. “Muggles aren’t  _ people _ .”

 

\----------------------- 

 

“Anyone other than Junhyuk?” Dr Lee asked the class at large, Junhyuk’s hand still the only one in the air. “Well then, Junhyuk, what is the answer?”

 

“Twenty-five,” he replied confidently and correctly. 

 

“Well done Junhyuk! The next question is-” Dr Lee began to say before being cut off by the loud ringing of the school bell. “Next time, then,” he amended, laughing as the class whooped in response. “See you in an hour for Art!”

 

The classroom quickly emptied via two doors, one to the outside area for kids who’d brought packed lunches and the other leading towards the dining hall for school meals. Junhyuk hung back again, hoping that his teacher had forgotten that he wanted him to go and spend time with his peers.

 

He had not.

 

“Junhyuk, you need to try and speak to people,” Dr Lee insisted apologetically but firmly. “You won’t ever make friends with them if you don’t try.”

 

“What if I don’t want to try?” Junhyuk asked.

 

“Well, I’m afraid you have to,” Dr Lee reiterated, gesturing to the door. Only when Junhyuk had stepped outside did he see Dr Lee leave the classroom. 

 

Awkwardly, he went and sat on a bench near a group of five kids his age, smiling tentatively when they looked up in his direction. “Nerd,” the closest muttered before she pointedly turned her back on him. He waited for a second, hoping that she was joking. When it became clear that she was not, he clenched his jaw and hurried back inside, desperately staving off an outburst of accidental magic. 

 

He needed to do something to take his mind off the embarrassment that was making sparks dance at his fingertips, so he concentrated all the energy elsewhere into something productive, levitating a book down from Dr Lee’s shelf that was far too high for him to reach. Behind the desk was out of sight of the window, so he wasn’t worried about one of his unfriendly classmates learning that he had yet another quality that set him apart from his peers. “From Here to Infinity,” he read the title aloud. “Looks interesting.”

 

Dr Lee did a double take when he came back in with a steaming cup of green tea only to find Junhyuk sat at the back of the room absorbed in a book. Junhyuk looked up nervously, worried about being kicked out again. His chest felt tighter at the mere thought. He wondered if going outside again would make him cry, and he came to the conclusion that it probably would, his level of panic rising.

 

“Hey, hey, calm down kid, what’s wrong?” Dr Lee asked concernedly, coming and sitting on top of the desk next to him.

 

Junhyuk was breathing quickly, trying desperately to not do any accidental magic. If he did, the obliviation squad would be paying poor Dr Lee a visit, not to mention that it would almost certainly get back to his grandparents that his dad had let him attend a muggle school. “I don’t want to go outside they hate me they hate me they hate me,” he choked out.

 

“Okay, you don’t have to today! I promise you can just stay inside,” Dr Lee assured him, desperately trying to calm the panicking child. 

 

Junhyuk relaxed a little, feeling the threat of a magical outburst lessening as he made an effort to control his breathing. “You promise?” he asked, eyes vulnerable and darting about like a cornered animal.

 

“I promise,” Dr Lee repeated. “Now, what do you normally do to relax yourself if you get upset?”

 

“I play chess.”

 

“With who, your mother?” 

 

“Oh no,” Junhyuk laughed at the thought. “She’s awful and always asks the bishops for help.”

 

“What do you mean?” Dr Lee questioned, confused at the wording.

 

“Oh, I, uh, mean the family friends whose surnames are Bishop, she owls them for strategy advice,” he stammered.

 

“Owls?”

 

“You misheard me, I said  _ emails _ ,” he lied, trying to cover up his tracks. In his shaken state he’d gotten messy with his muggle jargon. 

 

“Oh, right, I thought that was a bit odd. Maybe I need my hearing tested,” Dr Lee joked, thankfully falling for his explanation. “So who  _ do _ you play the game with?”

 

“Myself, mostly,” Junhyuk admitted.

 

“Well, as you know I’m fairly good at it; would you like to play a couple games with me now?” Dr Lee offered, gesturing to the chess set on his shelf.

 

“Sure,” replied Junhyuk, smiling genuinely for the first time that day. 

 

\----------------------- 

 

Siyeon said her polite goodbyes to Estrella, Cynthia and Marianne, the first two apparating away and Marianne closing the door to her home, leaving Siyeon and her best friend alone at last. She could not be more grateful to have someone like Viola Bealder in her life; her social circles until age twenty-six when she met her had been mostly limited to bigots like the other women at their gathering. 

 

In fifth year, she had been partnered with a muggleborn Ravenclaw in Potions. They had got on very well until her father had sent her a strongly worded letter saying that associating with ‘muggle filth’ like Andrea McDougall could compromise her marriage agreement with the Bang family. She suspected a dorm mate had ratted her out. Estrella in particular had looked very smug when she’d asked Professor Snape to move her. 

 

Though she felt guilty to admit it, her parents deaths three years ago from an untreatable strain of dragon pox had come as nothing but a relief to her. She’d played the dutifully grieving daughter at their funeral, faux-sobbing into Chan’s chest as he patted her back awkwardly. In reality she had not shed a tear.

 

As a woman, she could not inherit, so the family fortune had gone to her father’s brother Augustus, who lived in Sweden. However, a sizeable chunk of it had first gone to her personal account to spend on “all the things a proper wife should require”.

 

“Siyeonie, where on earth is your mind right now?” Viola asked, bringing Siyeon back to the present with a jolt.

 

“Oh, nothing important, just remembering how awful school was with that lot,” Siyeon explained, rolling her eyes. “If only you’d come to Britain sooner.”

 

“Well, you’ve got me now and you aren’t getting rid of me, don’t you worry,” Viola reassured. “On that note, I have something to tell you!”

 

“Yes?” Siyeon asked, intrigued by the way Viola looked fit to burst with her news.

 

“Aaron and I have finally been approved to adopt and we’re picking the baby up tomorrow!” she exclaimed in an excitable non-stop stream of words. “I’ve been dying to tell you for the past three days but I wanted to do it in person. Will you be her godmother?”

 

“I-” Siyeon choked slightly on her heightened emotions, “Of course, Vee, of course I will! I love you so much, you know that?”

 

“Well, who wouldn’t?” Viola joked, pushing a curl out of her eyes as she laughed. “You must come round next Wednesday,” she implored. “Bring Junhyuk and Chan as well, we can have dinner together and you can meet the little one!”

 

“Absolutely,” she agreed at once. “Chan gets home early on Wednesdays so that’s perfect.”

 

“Wonderful!”

 

“What’s her name going to be?” Siyeon enquired, eager to know everything about her future godchild.

 

“Evelyn,” she answered. “Her middle name is going to be Rosemary at Aaron’s mother’s insistence. I wasn’t too sure about it at first but now I’m quite taken with it.”

 

“Evelyn Rosemary Bealder. I love it,” Siyeon sighed, glad that at least one thing in her life was finally looking up. 

 

\----------------------- 

 

While Siyeon laughed happily with her best friend, Chan was watching the clock in between glances at his work, impatiently waiting as it ticked slowly towards 1pm. When, at last, the minute hand reached twelve and his lunch break had finally arrived, he was up like a shot from his creaky chair.

 

“Don’t suppose you’ll be joining me in the dining hall, Seungmin?” he asked his assistant out of habit, knowing the answer even before the man replied.

 

“Not today, Mr. Bang! I still have some final stats to go over, and I’ve brought food of my own from home,” Seungmin gestured to a large flask and a cellophane wrapped sandwich. 

 

“Well, enjoy!” Chan told him halfheartedly, making his way to the lift which took him promptly to the eighth floor. As the doors slid open with a chime, the smell of that day’s lunch hit him, his mouth watering at once. Upon closer proximity, he could see the elves dishing up Shepherd’s Pie with fresh vegetables, the pudding section of the tray filled with apple crumble. He knew without tasting that it would be delicious - the house elves never disappointed.

 

He sat down, alone as usual, just as the raucous crowd of aurors came into the dining hall. Without meaning to, his eyes strayed automatically to where Auror Lee was bending to pick up a tray. His breath hitched in his throat.

 

Lee straightened up, tray in hand, and turned as if he could feel Chan’s gaze upon him. At catching him watching he smirked, raising an eyebrow and giving him a little wave. Chan hastily looked away, but not before seeing Lee’s colleagues looking confused at their interaction. He wondered how the auror would explain it to his friends; Chan couldn’t even explain it to himself.

 

\----------------------- 

 

“Why were you waving at Bang back there, Lee?” Jennett Edge asked, breaking from her usual stance of pretending that Minho didn’t exist.

 

“Oh, I was the tester for his evaluation yesterday,” he brushed it off. At that, she lost interest and promptly went back to ignoring him as per usual. Some things would never change.

 

Though Minho was well liked by the older aurors such as Potter, Weasley, Park and Lim, in his own class it was a different story altogether. The first day of training he’d made some well-received introductions and had been confident in his pursuit of friendship with several of his colleagues. At only a few days into their initial training, however, it had become apparent that he was vastly above them with his skill level, so much so that they all resented him for it. He’d always been the first to complete any assignment or to master a new defensive spell, his position at the top of the class long established and unwavering. 

 

Nobody was outright rude to him, likely estimating that he’d later be even further above them in the pecking order and realising it would be foolish to make an enemy of him. They just didn’t respond with anything but disinterested politeness to his initial efforts to befriend them. Nearly three years later, the end of training in sight with mere months to go, they still never included him in their lunchtime conversations.

 

Minho sat at the end of the table, tucking into his Shepherd’s Pie with his perfected air of indifference while five of his classmates discussed the hand-to-hand combat training they would be engaging in after lunch. Last year, the junior aurors had shared their lunch break with the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Minho got on fairly well with a couple of people from there, so he had at least had people to eat with who let him in on their discussions. None of them could understand why he’d become an auror when he had been scouted by professional quidditch leagues, but asides from that they hadn’t really had any disagreements. It had been nice to idly talk to them, and he’d certainly missed it this year.

 

Instead of his buddies from MGS, Minho now had only his unfriendly co-workers, the Department of Ministry Budgeting which was literally just Bang, and the five miserable looking fellows who were in charge of apparition testing. He knew only the name of one: Hector Mauve, who had taken Minho’s test seven years previously.

 

Looking over at Bang, Minho noticed the other man quickly looking away from him again. That was the second time in five minutes that he’d caught him doing so. Third time’s the charm, so, curious, he kept watching. Sure enough, Bang glanced back once more after about ten seconds, looking shocked when he found Minho’s gaze already trained upon him.

 

Minho’s hunch that Bang wasn’t as straight as he purported to be was becoming more and more believable by the second. Not only was he pretty sure that he’d been staring at his ass when he bent to get his tray, Chan kept looking at him fleetingly like a middle-schooler with his first crush. That taken into consideration, the other man would surely be more interesting company than his colleagues, if only to watch him getting increasingly flustered. Making a snap decision, he grabbed his tray and stood up, wondering if anyone would even notice his absence.

 

\----------------------- 

 

Chan looked up again, still not sure why his eyes kept being drawn to the attractive auror, only to find that he had disappeared. His whereabouts were not a mystery for long, however, as Chan heard an all too familiar voice behind him. 

 

“Hey stranger,” Auror Lee greeted him, smiling flirtatiously as he moved to sit down opposite Chan at the table. “You rather rushed out on me yesterday.”

 

“Oh, yeah, sorry about that,” Chan apologised. “I had to get back to, uh, something,” he added vaguely, cursing himself for not having a believable excuse cooked up. To stop himself rambling further, he shoved a large forkful of food into his mouth.

 

“How… attractive,” Lee commented. “Although, it is  _ amazing  _ just how much you can fit in there.”

 

Chan choked a little, still managing to swallow his mouthful but only just. 

 

“What?” he queried, the picture of innocence though his eyes divulged his amusement. “I wasn’t implying anything, Chan. If you interpreted it that way that’s all on you, babe.”

 

“I’m sure you’re just imagining things, Lee,” Finding himself on the receiving end of a pointed look, he begrudgingly amended. “Sorry, I meant  _ Minho _ , of course.”

 

“You’re learning well, darling,” Minho replied with a wink that made Chan immediately regret giving in to him. Having already wolfed down his Shepherd’s Pie, he made a start on his pudding.

 

“What made you come over here today of all days?” Chan queried, genuinely curious. “Usually you just stick to yelling your jokingly flirty comments from afar.”

 

“Who’s joking?” Minho asked in response. Before Chan had time to react other than a sort of strangled noise in the back of his throat, he continued. “And can’t a guy shake things up a little?”

 

“I suppose,” Chan said slowly, still looking and feeling rather skeptical about the whole situation. 

 

“Plus,” the auror elaborated, “I couldn’t just let poor you keep pining for me from afar, now could I?”

 

“Ha. Ha. How  _ incredibly  _ funny,” Chan replied sardonically. Amazingly, he kept his cool although his heart rate felt like it had tripled its pace. “I’ve no intentions of ever ‘pining’ for you, Minho Lee.”

 

“You’ll need to tell that to your identical twin Nahc who was sitting in your seat staring at me five minutes ago, I wonder where he went?” 

 

Having finished his apple crumble, Minho’s spoon darted across the table to scoop some up from Chan’s tray. He made a noise of protest, but quieted as he watched Minho close his eyes as he savoured the dessert, sighing contentedly. Although he feigned objection, he didn’t make any real effort to stop the auror as he stole another spoonful. 

 

“It’s awful hot in here isn’t it?” Minho commented casually, undoing the top two buttons of his auror training robe as he continued. “They really need to update the cooling charms for this room.”

 

Chan tried, and admittedly failed, not to stare at the now visible part of Minho’s chest as he replied. “I’ll, um, put in a report on it,” he promised, attempting to look anywhere but at the collarbone exposed as the other man tugged at his collar.

 

\----------------------- 

 

Minho was rather enjoying himself. Bang was  _ not _ straight, no doubt about it. Of course the man was also terribly closeted and would claim to be a hundred percent heterosexual, but Minho wasn’t remotely fooled by his facade. 

 

Bang was already staring at him in awe, his Mr Straight Guy persona momentarily switched off, so he elected to take it one step further. Stretching dramatically, he added “These damn robes are good for training but by Merlin they’re warm. I wish I could just take them off.”

 

Chan’s eyes widened. “How about you just use a charm on yourself,” he suggested in a shaky voice. 

 

Minho felt rather mean teasing him so much but it was  _ so  _ much more fun than sitting with his auror ‘buddies’. He waved his conscience aside. “The only cooling charms I know are for food or to change the temperature of an entire room,” he replied truthfully.

 

“Oh yes, I must not be thinking straight today,” Chan said with a nervous sort of laugh, taking a large gulp from his glass of water. 

 

“I  _ bet  _ you aren’t,” Minho muttered more to himself than to Bang.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Oh, nothing,” he dismissed, running a hand through his mussed up hair and watching Bang’s eyes follow his every movement. He wondered if the man had even admitted to himself that he was attracted to Minho, or if he was simply waving it off as normal feelings for someone who wasn’t the other half of your uncomfortably heterosexual marriage. “You know, for someone so supposedly straight, you sure do like undressing me with your eyes, Chan,” Minho teased. From the immediate hardening of Chan’s expression, he could tell that he’d gone too far. 

 

“Would you look at that,” Chan remarked, painfully polite and distant. “I’m all done with lunch; work calls!”

 

With that, he stood up, handed his tray to an eager house elf, then strode out of the dining hall.

 

\-----------------------

  
  


“Okay, although perhaps not the right wording, let me get this straight,” Woojin said, lounging back on his couch with his boyfriend leant against him. Minho sat on their beanbag chair opposite them, and had just been venting about that day’s events. “You think  _ Chan Bang _ is queer?”

 

Hyunjin laughed, still seemingly waiting for Minho to yell ‘April Fools!’ despite the fact that it was September. “You  _ are _ joking, right, Min?” he asked.

 

“This is my serious face,” he replied, pointing to himself and adopting his best sincere expression.

 

“It looks more like your constipated face,” Woojin remarked. “I can run a diagnostic spell on you if you want?” he joked, wand at the ready.

 

“Hilarious,” Minho rolled his eyes. “Really though, I wouldn’t have believed me either a week ago but the man is as queer as a triangular galleon. Naturally, I thought I was imagining him checking me out at first, but then it kept happening and happening and happening. I joked about taking my robes off and he practically creamed his pants. I’d never noticed him looking at me before but now it seems like that’s all he’s doing.”

 

“Are we talking about the same Chan Bang?” said Woojin, his facial expression best described as ‘incredulous’. “Cause from what I’ve seen of him he exudes ‘boring straight upper class guy’.”

 

“He looked ready to pin me up against a wall yesterday in his assessment. And then after the duel when I  _ renervated _ him, I gave him my hand to help him up and he didn’t let go of it for a solid thirty seconds,” he insisted. 

 

“Well, if anyone is gonna seduce the married heir to the Bang fortune I suppose it could only be you,” Hyunjin sighed. 

 

“Who could resist this?” Minho asked, gesturing to his body. “Hey!” he exclaimed moments later when both of his friends made a retching noise in unplanned unison.

 

“Sorry honey, you aren’t my type,” Woojin apologised sarcastically. “Something’s just… missing. I think we should stay friends, though!”

 

“Is it because I’m not a woman?” he questioned, wiping his eyes as if he were crying profusely.

 

“Yeah,  _ definitely _ .”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for reading!! as ever, you can find me on twitter @woominchans, same as on here <33 pls comment if u wanna, i'd love to know what you think :)


	5. Of Confusion and Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Though he’d been dreading lunchtime, Chan was surprised to find that Minho was nowhere to be seen for the entire hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the help on junhyuk's random science knowledge, nini :D this one's for you

**Chapter Five - Of Confusion and Revelations**

 

For the two days after his most recent encounter with Minho Lee, Chan had been doing his very best to avoid him. He had tried eating lunch out of the Ministry twice in a row, but had to begrudgingly admit to himself after scrambling back into his office with mere seconds left of his break that it wasn’t feasible. After apparating to a restaurant and waiting for his food, he’d scarcely had ten minutes to sit and eat it before he was right back at the ministry, hurrying back to his office and feeling as if he hadn’t had a break at all.

 

His only other option was eating in his office with Seungmin, and Chan would rather do just about anything else— it wasn’t that he didn’t like Seungmin, he just couldn’t bear to lose his brief reprieve from that stuffy office. Reluctantly, Chan resolved to return to the dining hall the following day. 

 

Even if it would most likely result in Lee sitting with him again. 

 

Determinedly steering his train of thought away from said frustrating auror, Chan’s mind wandered back to the fight he had had with his wife that morning. 

 

When Chan woke, he had been somewhat unnerved by the expectant way Siyeon was looking at him. While usually trying to stay as far over on his side of the bed, he discovered that, in his sleep, he must have rolled closer to the centre, seeing as he had woken up to Siyeon cuddling him. Always having been uncomfortable with such affection from pretty much anyone bar his son, it was all he could do not to scramble away as quickly as possible. Hoping she had fallen asleep, he gently extricated himself from her arms after a couple of minutes, and got up to take a shower.

She hadn’t. 

 

After his shower, which was as long as possible to draw out the time he could spend away from Siyeon and her weird mood, Chan came downstairs, discovering that breakfast had been prepared not by Mipsy, but by his wife. Fresh flowers had been arranged in an ornate vase as a centrepiece.

 

Knowing something was up, yet perplexed as to what, he ate in a confused sort of silence, thanking her politely when he’d finished the slightly chewy blueberry pancakes. She had that same expectant look on her face, making him wish she’d just come out with it and tell him just what it was she was hoping for. Whatever it was, he’d no doubt he’d fail to meet the bar. 

 

They stood up and she, for some reason, presented him with a brand new tie and kissed him enthusiastically, trying to shove her tongue into his unwilling mouth. 

 

“Siyeon, I, uh-” he began awkwardly, pulling away from her sloppy and unwelcome embrace. He thought it had been long established that he didn’t welcome such actions. Neither did she, at that— they’d come to an unspoken truce of sorts, so why?...

 

“Yes?” she replied, looking up at him. A small smile tugged at the corner of her lips, seemingly waiting for him to do something, say something even. He didn’t know what she wanted from him. 

 

“What’s going on today? You seem different,” he asked instead— clearly not the words she was hoping for, as her eyes hardened back to the contempt he was more accustomed to. 

 

“You were acting funny and for some idiotic reason I thought it was because you had a surprise planned for me,” she spat out, distancing herself from him physically by clearing up the plates in a shockingly aggressive manner. She stormed out, and he heard a loud crash as she presumably threw them into the sink. “MIPSY!” 

 

Chan went through to the kitchen and apologised to the poor house elf as she cleared away the shards of crockery. He really wished Siyeon wouldn’t treat Mipsy like that, but she was rather stuck in her ways. 

 

After that, Siyeon had gone upstairs. Shortly after, he’d seen her coming down with her bag, ready to go out and spend away her feelings as she always did when they fought. He tried to stop her to apologise for whatever he’d apparently done, but in response to his attempt she flipped him off and stormed out of the house.

 

Junhyuk had come downstairs moments later, schoolbag in hand and smile on his little face at the prospect of another day at that muggle school he was trying out. Siyeon had neglected to remember, in her huff, that she was supposed to be taking their son to school. This was by no means the first time her emotions had come at the cost of their son’s happiness. For all his faults, Chan could safely say that he would never compromise Junhyuk. 

 

Chan had been late to work that morning, having dropped his son off himself. Luckily, Seungmin had made plenty of notes in the early meeting he’d missed, so he wouldn’t miss out on the no doubt  _ fascinating  _ details. 

 

——————

 

Felix thought he recognised Junhyuk’s father from somewhere, but he couldn’t quite place it. It could be that he just had one of those faces, or maybe he was someone notable but not enough so to leave a full impression. He could be a politician? An actor, perhaps?... It would be rude to ask, so he pushed it to the back of his mind. It was likely just a passing resemblance to someone or other, especially given that he’d only seen him from a distance. 

 

He had to teach the kids history that morning, and to be honest? Felix was dreading it. Although a little unprofessional, he was nursing a hangover, and it was killing him. He’d forgotten to take anything for it that morning, as it had only set in after he’d left the house. There weren’t even any painkillers in his desk, let alone the instant cures he kept in his fridge back home. 

 

Pasting a bright smile on his face, Felix turned around from writing the date on the board. “Who’s ready to learn about King Henry VIII?” he asked, trying to look enthused enough to hype up the class. They were one of the most- well, he didn’t want to say  _ stupid _ because that would make him a terrible teacher and person, but… their minds had to be trained, that was for sure. 

 

“What’s a king?” Gretel Simmons piped up, one finger shoved up her nose and rummaging around. She was eight years old, lived in a country with a reigning monarchy, and  _ didn’t know what a king was. _ He truly had his work cut out for him.

 

“Well, Gretel, that’s a very good question. Does anyone else know the answer?” Felix asked the class at large. He was going to demand a backrub when he got home. It wasn’t his fault they’d been out so late, and the lack of sleep was making him tense all over.

 

“It’s what Queen Elsebeth is!” answered Kevin Lloyd, a streak of what Felix hoped was chocolate or mud across his left cheek. 

 

_ So close, yet so far away. _

 

“That’s along the right track, well done Kevin,” he praised, and Kevin beamed, proud of himself. The boy then started doodling in his workbook, aota of attention span clearly expended. “Anyone else?” Felix prompted. Surely, one in particular would… 

 

Yes. Sure enough, there was Junhyuk, hand held high in the air. He nodded at him to speak.

 

“In most cases, a king is the male ruler of an independent state, especially one who inherits the position by right of birth,” Junhyuk told the class, none of whom seemed to be actually listening. 

 

Felix smiled at him, glad that at least one of his students cared about the lesson at all. Even with his throbbing headache, it brought him joy.

 

They were silent for a moment, and then-

 

“What’s an indedent stake?” asked Gretel.

 

Usually, Felix was a very patient man. Right then, however, he wanted to hit his head against the wall with no small amount of force. 

 

Somehow, miraculously, he managed to make it through the class without doing so and was granted the brief reprieve of morning break. When he said it was a miracle, he truly meant it— he’d taught them the rhyme for remembering the order of Henry VIII’s wives and the class had spent a solid ten minutes chanting it non-stop. He should be pleased they’d learnt it at least, he supposed, but his head just hurt  _ so  _ badly.

 

Coffee. He needed it and he needed it  _ immediately _ . 

 

Unfortunately, he ran into the student teacher with a crush on him, and had to spend ten minutes trying to escape the ensuing uncomfortable small talk that followed. No matter how many times he’d tried to make his disinterest evident, she kept standing way too close whenever they saw each other, crossing her arms to accentuate her chest and batting her eyes. Every conversation with her felt like trying to escape the grips of quicksand, if quicksand could talk just above the pitch level that was comfortable for the human ear.

 

In his classroom when he returned, he found Junhyuk Bang. Felix couldn’t really say that he was surprised. Each time he made Junhyuk go and talk to his peers, he’d see him getting rejected through the window. He felt increasingly bad about it to the point he’d stopped putting up a fuss about Junhyuk sitting quietly with his books during breaktime.

 

“Hey, Junhyuk,” he greeted him. Junhyuk looked up worriedly, eyes flitting to the group of children outside. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you go out there,” Felix reassured, watching the boy’s shoulders drop in relief. “What’re you reading today?”

 

“Oh, just a book on geology,” Junhyuk replied offhandedly, turning a page as he looked back down at it. “Igneous Petrology and the like, you know?”

 

Felix did  _ not  _ know. “Uh huh.”

 

“It’s not really a massive focus of mine, but I saw it mentioned in a vaguer form in one of the textbooks I read recently, so I had Mipsy pick up something more specific,” he went on, turning another page. Felix would think he was skimming it if he didn’t have an obvious understanding of whatever the hell it was. "Have you heard of Bowen's Reaction Series? It's quite fascinating, especially with how the variety in crystal types is based on the level of silicate content in the magma."

 

“Quite,” Felix said intelligently. “So how’s your chess playing going?” As he asked, he sat down— or at least, he  _ tried  _ to. Thankfully, he’d already put his coffee down, or he’d be dealing with burns as well as a more intense migraine. He’d misjudged the placement of his chair and sat down half on thin air, legs crumpling and his head hitting the edge of the desk with a resounding  _ thwack! _

 

“Dr. Lee, are you alright?!” Junhyuk ran over at once, Felix’s entire being alight with embarrassment at his student seeing him like this. “It sounds like you hit your head pretty hard!”

 

“Don’t worry, Junhyuk. Nothing hurt but my pride,” he reassured him. Even so, Junhyuk reached his little hand out and touched Felix’s forehead in concern. It felt like he’d been given an electric shock when he did so, and Junhyuk clearly felt it too as he jumped back.

 

“Sorry, sir!” he apologised profusely, wringing his hands. “Don’t be mad.”

 

“Why would I be mad about a bit of static electricity, Junhyuk?” Felix brushed it off, standing up and reaching up to feel his head. Though expecting his fingers to come away red with blood, there was nothing. In fact, when he pulled out a mirror from his desk, there wasn’t even a bump.

 

How odd.

 

Supposing it probably felt worse than it actually was, Felix got on with organising his powerpoint for the next class while intermittently sipping at his coffee. 

 

It was about halfway through the post-break maths lesson that Felix realised that his hangover had disappeared, as if by magic. He’d forgotten to take the painkillers he had pilfered from the staff cupboard, so there was no explaining it, even. If anything, he’d felt better since hitting his head than he had all morning— not immediately, though.

 

Only after Junhyuk had touched his forehead.

 

How odd, indeed.

 

————————— 

 

Minho was sick of the way his colleagues treated him, if he was entirely honest. Just because he excelled in performance exams didn’t automatically mean that he was looking down on them, plotting against their success or anything else equally ridiculous. At times during his first year, he’d wished he was less different, that he stood out less simply so that he could make friends. He had thought himself past that, but after a sleepless night and being point-blank ignored by Hemelda Smelting when he politely wished her a good morning, Minho’s mind had started to drift once more to being irritated with the natural edge he had over them.

 

Hyunjin and Woojin were incredible best friends to him, and he couldn’t wish for anyone better in that regard. Changbin, whenever he got to see him, was always enthused to greet him. He worked in a different department, though, so even with them both being ministerial staff he barely saw his friend unless they met in the lift or in a hallway. Maybe next year their lunchtimes would overlap again— last year had been so nice, being able to sit with Changbin instead of enduring an uncomfortable hour being completely ignored by the Aurors at their lunch table.

 

Minho really should arrange to go around Changbin’s again soon— last time he’d ran into him, Changbin had mentioned that his fiancee had been asking after him. Along with Woojin and Hyunjin, Minho had genuinely never met a lovelier couple.

 

Changbin was an ex-pro Quidditch player, so was a highly valued asset to the Department of Magical Games and Sports. He’d retired after that bitch of an investigative reporter, Rita Skeeter, had exposed that he’d been in a long-term relationship with another man. Though not technically against the rules, Quidditch was so deeply rooted in homophobia that he’d chosen to step down and work on equality from within the government. His ex-team, which Minho vindictively kept up with, hadn’t come close to winning a single game since they lost their star seeker.  _ Served them fucking right. _

 

He missed the brief reprieve of lunches with Changbin. At least he could annoy Bang now, though how long he could get away with that was debatable. Minho sighed heavily, already completely done with the day although it was only 10am.

 

“You alright there, mate?” a concerned sounding voice asked him, accompanied by someone behind him putting their hand on his shoulder. It was a relief that Weasley had spoken first before touching him without warning, or Minho probably would have instinctively disarmed him. Or tried to, at least— he was a member of the Golden Trio, after all. Most likely, Minho himself would have ended up stunned on the floor if he’d gone for him.

 

“I’m fine, don’t worry, sir,” Minho brushed off Weasley’s worries. “Just a bit tired, is all.”

 

“If you’re sure…” Weasley didn’t sound convinced. “Anyway, I was actually looking for you. Harry wants to see you in the office.” At this, Minho must have looked alarmed. “Nothing bad, don’t worry!”

 

Still not all that reassured by being called to the office of a superior without warning, Minho followed Weasley nonetheless. 

 

——— 

 

Siyeon was sick of trying to love her husband. She’d been pledged to the alliance, a contract against the will of both involved parties, since birth, and she was tired. Her mother had always told her as a child that she’d learn to love Chan as she herself had learned to love Siyeon’s father. When they were wed and  _ still _ nothing was there, her mother had told her to wait it out until the birth of their child; then, she guaranteed that Siyeon and Chan would grow to love each other. For the good of the child, she had said.

 

Siyeon had  _ tried. _

 

But if she couldn’t even care all that much about Junhyuk, her own flesh and blood, how could she learn to fall for a man who had never loved her either? She felt terrible every time she was irritated by her own child, but he reminded her so much of Chan in so many ways that it was hard to forge an emotional connection. In fact, she was more excited to be godmother to Viola’s child than she was at the birth of her own.

 

Surely, this made her a terrible person.

 

Junhyuk was so  _ frustrating _ , though! He was so fiercely intelligent that he was always correcting her, always looking at her as if she was an idiot if she didn’t know the answer to one of his questions about complex magical theory. She’d always struggled in school and had barely scraped passes in her OWLs, not even considering continuing to NEWTs. After all, she didn’t need to have a career, what with being engaged to the heir to the Bang fortune before she could walk. 

 

She cared for Junhyuk in her own way, in that ‘I birthed you, you are of me’ primordial sort of sense, but did she really love him? If Siyeon was honest, she resented them both— Junhyuk for his intelligence and Chan for not living up to her childhood expectations of marriage.  _ Not that she’d ever say it. _

 

She doubted that he loved her, his stupid dropout mother who could never understand him. Belatedly, Siyeon remembered that she had been supposed to take him to school that morning. 

 

Oh well. 

 

She was sure that her  _ perfect  _ husband had picked up the task. Smiling at Viola, who had agreed to meet her in Diagon Alley, she walked towards her best friend. Time to do what she did best— spend her resentment away until it ebbed into a dull ache in her chest. 

 

———— 

 

“Hey, Minho!” Harry Potter greeted him as Minho entered his office. “Glad Ron could find you— he was already off out doing something or I’d have come to get you myself. Have a seat.” He gestured to one in front of his desk. “You’re probably wondering what the hell you’re doing here, right?”

 

Minho smiled awkwardly, sitting down and shifting uncomfortably in nervousness. “I am,” he confirmed. “Auror Weasley confirmed that it wasn’t anything bad but I can’t help but worry.”

 

“Ron told you right, don’t stress,” Potter hastened to reassure Minho. “I have an offer for you, actually. You know how Ron and I were fast-tracked past our final year of training because we were advanced beyond the rest of our class?”

 

He nodded— everyone knew Potter and Weasley’s stories, be it their teenage Death Eater fighting years or their prestigious careers in the Auror Department. He wasn’t really quite sure how this applied to  _ him _ , however. 

 

“You’re trying to guess why I brought that up, right?”

 

Minho fought back a double take; if he wasn’t trained to the highest standards in occlumency, he’d have thought Potter had just read his mind. “I am, yes,” he admitted.

 

“Well, Ron and I have had a chat and decided we’d like to offer you the same. Honestly, you’re the most promising trainee the department has seen since Ron and I, not to sound full of myself. We’d like you to have one of the full Auror roles in training the NATF. It’s partially because we were already considering putting you through fast-track and partially because we’re understaffed with the larger volume of employees passing the NATF this year. What do you say?” Potter asked, waiting for an answer patiently as if anyone in their right mind would consider turning down such an offer. 

 

“Sir, I don’t know what to say, I- I’m honoured,” Minho stammered out, feeling like he’d just been  _ langlocked _ with how hard he was finding it to speak, whereas he actually had no excuse other than shock. He’d known he was leaps and bounds ahead of his classmates, but this was a whole other level.  _ They were all going to HATE him.  _

 

Lunchtime just got a whole lot more unbearable. 

 

“Say yes, then,” Potter urged, smiling reassuringly at him. “You’re up to the task, I promise. We wouldn’t have asked you otherwise. Ron and I looked in on a couple of your NATF tests and you’re an incredibly talented dueller. All that we’ve seen while helping with training, plus the accounts we’ve had from other trainers, all points to this being the right path for you.”

 

“Thank you so much, sir— I really appreciate this opportunity and I’ll work hard to never make you doubt this decision!” Minho promised earnestly. 

 

“I’m sure you won’t, Minho,” Potter replied. “I see a lot of myself in you, if I’m honest.”

 

“How so?” Minho couldn’t help but ask. Being compared to Harry Potter by the man himself wasn’t exactly an everyday experience. 

 

“I’ve noticed your distance from your trainee peers,” Potter explained, looking sympathetic but not pitying, to Minho’s great relief. “I went through that a lot in school. People pushed me away in jealousy  because of my fame, because I inherited a lot from my parents, sometimes even because I excelled in class — though that brand of isolation was more Hermione’s plight. I see the same happening to you because you’ve been far ahead of them since day one. I’m not reading into it wrong, am I?”

 

“I’m afraid not,” Minho admitted with a sigh. “They all but entirely ignore me.”

 

“I get it. Believe me, I get it.” Here, Potter pulled some documents from his desk. “I’ve spoken to the Minister, and your fast-track has been approved for after NATF training, which runs from now until the end of the year. After that, you won’t need to worry about seeing them unless you’re the one conducting their reviews. You’ll be eating lunch with the other Aurors from then on. Just sign these, and you’ll be inducted in as a fully fledged Auror in January.”

 

It was all a lot to deal with, but Minho knew he could do it. He held his hand out for the papers that would change his career forever.

 

———— 

 

Though he’d been dreading lunchtime, Chan was surprised to find that Minho was nowhere to be seen for the entire hour. Once it had passed without a glimpse of the overbearing Auror, he headed back to his office. There sat Seungmin but, for once, he was not alone.

 

“Oh, Mr Bang!” he exclaimed, looking up at the clock. “I didn’t realise it was already the end of lunchtime— Jisungie will just be leaving.”

 

In the nine months Chan had had Seungmin as his assistant, he hadn’t seen him have a visitor. He seemed close to this other man, if the nickname was anything to go by. “You don’t need to hurry him out,” Chan reassured Seungmin. “We don’t have tonnes to sort through today other than increased staffing in the International Relations department, so you can finish what you’re eating.”

 

“Thank you, sir! Sungie has to go now anyway, sadly,” Seungmin lamented, pouting at this ‘Sungie’ person. “I’ll introduce you quickly before he does, though! Mr Bang, this is my boyfriend Jisung. Sungie, meet my boss.”

 

Jisung stood up and shook Chan’s hand with a wide smile. For someone so slight, he had a very strong grip. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr Bang! Seungmin has told me all about you— I’m glad you treat him well.”

 

“Glad to meet you too,” Chan greeted him pleasantly. Whoever could delay him from starting the pile of documents on the IR department was already a saint in his book. “Do you work at the Ministry?”

 

“Yep, in the Spell Creation department,” Jisung confirmed. So, he basically had Chan’s dream job. 

 

“That’s under Granger, right?” Chan asked, already knowing full well it was. He’d let himself daydream about joining that department far too many times. 

 

“Yeah, she’s an amazing boss,” he enthusiastically confirmed. “She let me come see Seungminnie today during his lunch because it’s our anniversary— didn’t even tell her, she just saw it on my desk calendar.”

 

“Oh? Congratulations to you both,” Chan said with a smile. Even with Jisung having the job Chan had wanted for his entire career, he couldn’t find it in himself to resent someone so  _ bright _ in personality. This guy was the perfect match for the equally vibrant Seungmin, it seemed.

 

“Thank you!” Seungmin said with one of his signature beaming smiles. “Five years today— they’ve really flown by.”

 

_ Damn _ . Seungmin and Jisung must have started dating midway through Hogwarts, with that amount of time spent together. 

 

He resolved to let his assistant off work early that day.

 

————— 

 

Somehow, unfortunately for Minho, word had traveled fast about his promotion-to-be. His peers stopped talking the second he walked by, shooting him furtive, jealous glances until he was out of earshot and they could begin to disparage him out loud once more. As before, none were stupid enough to insult him to his face, especially now knowing for  _ sure _ that he was going to be their superior in rank. He thought that perhaps, direct attacks may have been better than this. It was horrible, whatever it was.

 

He needed a distraction, and he needed one  _ soon _ .

 

As soon as he’d clocked out for the day, Minho apparated back into his apartment and rifled through his closet for something pretty. Once appropriately dolled up, makeup highlighting his features and a silver ring glinting on his lower lip, he headed off to the muggle bar a street away from his house. It had a fairly high turnover of randoms, given that it was central London and plenty of people were just passing through. Hopefully he could find a hot muggle guy to fuck his stress away.

 

He’d downed a shot before leaving, simply to save money on getting drunk, but he wondered if he’d somehow accidentally downed the bottle at the sight that met him when he walked into the building. A single shot wasn’t enough to even make him buzzed, let alone hallucinate the sight of Bang sat at the bar. Yet, there he was.

 

Though it would delay his end goal for the night, Minho couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to both annoy Bang and find out what the hell Mr Pureblood Heir was doing in a  _ muggle bar. _

 

“Hey, stranger!” he greeted him, sliding onto the seat beside him and making Bang jump out of his skin. The other man had a pint in front of him that it looked like he had only drank from once, judging by how full it still was. Muggle beer wasn’t usually to the taste of magicals, so perhaps he’d just tried it for the first time and was too socially awkward to ask for something else.

 

“Minho? What are you doing here?” Chan asked, eyes wide and darting around in panic as if expecting Minho to have shown up with a large group ready to sell out that he visited a muggle bar. 

 

“This bar is right near my house— what are  _ you _ doing here?”

 

“I had a fight with Siyeon and apparated into central muggle London to get away from it all. Wandered around for a bit and ended up here,” he explained, looking tired of life in general. 

 

“What happened?” Minho asked, wondering why he even cared. He did, though, for some reason.

 

“I don’t know why I’m even considering telling you this…” he trailed off, looking uncertain. He took another sip of his beer through pursed lips, wincing at the taste. It looked like Minho’s hypothesis had proven true there. 

 

He waved over the bartender, who smiled at the sight of a regular. “Hey, David! Can I get two vodka lemonades— you can pour away that beer, my friend doesn’t like it.”

 

David did as asked, returning quickly with their drinks and heading off to separate a fight that had just broken out between two women in neon tube tops, skirts so short that Minho could see far more of the female body than he ever wished to. “You didn’t have to do that,” Chan said, drinking a little of the vodka lemonade just the same. He didn’t wince this time. “I thought it’d be like butterbeer,” he admitted, pulling a face at the memory of the muggle beer.

 

“Most do,” Minho laughed. “Want to talk now? It helps to vent, sometimes. I won’t go blabbing.” Chan didn’t answer, so Minho looked up and noticed that he’d zoned out looking at his outfit.  _ Interesting _ . He snapped his fingers in front of Chan’s face. “Hey. You were saying about that fight?”

 

“U-Uh yes I was talking yes,” Chan stuttered, blushing at being caught. “Siyeon tried to get me to sleep with her because Junhyuk’s away with my parents tonight and- Fuck. Didn’t mean to say that much, you caught me off guard.”

 

“Well, now that you’ve said it— mind if I ask  _ why _ you didn’t jump at the opportunity to get laid?” Minho asked. 

 

“I-I don’t really… like it?” Chan said, voice vulnerably small. “I’ve never really been attracted to Siyeon,” he admitted. “I think I’m broken, or something. I’ve been betrothed to her since birth; surely there should be something by now.”

 

Damn. Bang was really letting it all out. Minho got the sense that he’d never talked about this to anyone, and once started he couldn’t really stop the flow of confession. “That doesn’t make you broken, Chan. People who don’t experience sexual attraction aren’t broken in the slightest, it’s just how they are.”

 

“No, I-” Chan stopped himself, had a quick internal debate, and then continued. “I’m frustrated all the time, pretty much. I just don’t like being with her. She’s so beautiful, I don’t understand why it feels so wrong.”

 

Minho knew a sexuality crisis when he saw one. 

 

“How about other women— are you attracted to them?” he asked, leaning a little closer and seeing the embarrassed flush on Chan’s face redden deeper. 

 

“...No,” he said, voice cracking a little. His eyes flickered to the lip ring Minho was wearing, to his makeup, to his exposed collarbones. Audibly, he gulped. “I don’t understand why.”

 

“Have you ever kissed another guy, Chan?” Minho asked, leaning still closer and watching the emotions running through Chan’s mind, visible in his widened eyes. Chan shook his head, seemingly unable to speak, frozen. Minho paused, deliberating whether he was willing to mess up his work dynamic just because Bang was hot, confused and needy and looking at Minho like he’d never seen anyone prettier.  _ Fuck it. _ “Would you like to?”

 

_ A little closer. _

 

“I- uh. I..” Chan stammered out, looking torn between want and rationality. Minho knew the feeling.

 

Minho brushed Chan’s fringe away from his eyes. He usually had it styled up, but it was hanging loose. “That’s not an answer, Channie.”

 

Almost imperceptibly, but definitely there just the same, Chan nodded. Slowly, Minho moved closer and closer, waiting for the other man to stop him, to push him away before their lips could connect.

 

_ He didn’t _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyhey!! hope you enjoyed the chapter!! pls leave a comment if so, they're so incredibly motivating you wouldn't believe <33 if you have a twitter, feel free to follow me @woominchans (i post spoilers for this and my other wips on there) (i'm currently writing a woominchan threesome oneshot) (and like three other fics too) :D


	6. First Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m the first guy to touch you like this, aren’t I?” Minho asked, a hand now on both of Chan’s thighs. Weakly, Chan nodded. “Better make it memorable then, huh?”

_Slowly, Minho moved closer and closer, waiting for the other man to stop him, to push him away before their lips would connect._

 

_He didn’t._

 

Instead, it was Minho who paused his own descent. Softly, he cupped Chan’s jaw, tilting his head up to look into his eyes. “Are you sure?”

 

Tension hung between them, a cord of emotion pulled taught enough to snap - and snap it did. Minho saw the change in Chan’s expression, saw the moment he gave up on trying to deny himself what he wanted. Surging forward, Chan Bang, pureblood heir and purportedly straight head of the Department of Ministry Budgeting, kissed him.

 

Minho had kissed many men in his life, and while he wouldn’t say this was the _best_ by any means, he definitely had something to work with. He could feel the pent up desperation in every movement of Chan’s lips and in how he pulled him closer. It was addicting to be the focus of such absolute _want_. Minho could tell that he was probably the only guy that he had ever kissed. For someone who had been so completely closeted all his life, this must be the first, exhilarating, taste of freedom.

 

Minho hummed into the kiss, rewarded by a gasp he took advantage of, flicking his tongue against the other man’s. Chan moaned, and jumped at the sound, pulling back and pressing a finger to his own lips in surprise.

 

“What is it?..” Minho asked, a little confused.

 

“It’s never felt like that,” Chan replied with the kind of honesty that came only from speaking without thinking first. “Kissing I - I mean, I’ve never actually liked it.”

 

Oh. So that was it, then. “I’m honoured,” he said playfully, trying to make light of what was an unfamiliar situation for the both of them. “That’s quite the compliment.”

 

“Can I interest you in anything to drink while you come up for air?” David the bartender asked, making them both startle. Neither had noticed him approaching, each too preoccupied with the other. He sighed, clearly used to such customers. “Well?”

 

Chan seemed a bit freaked out that the bartender had seen them, seemingly having forgotten in the moment that they were in public. He looked ready to bolt, in fact, so Minho spoke up. “We’re just leaving, actually,” he said, handing over some money. “Keep the change. C’mon, Chan.” He grabbed the other man’s hand and pulled him up from his seat, leading him out of the bar. They only stopped after reaching an alleyway about a street over.

 

Chan wore the look of a man whose entire world view had just crumbled away. Still, he stared at Minho in newly discovered reverence as he leant against the wall of the alleyway. “I don’t know what to do, here…” he admitted. Minho got the feeling that a lack of knowledge was not something Bang often admitted to.

 

“What do you _want_ to do?” Minho asked. This wasn’t how he’d pictured his night panning out, but he wasn’t really complaining. It was more interesting, at the very least, than a mediocre dicking from some muggle guy.

 

Chan’s eyes flickered between the low cut of Minho’s shirt and his lips, then ran a hand through his dark hair in frustration.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

Minho felt a jolt run through him. Bang was _hot_ , and he wasn’t even trying. Minho could only imagine how good he’d look without that hideous outfit dulling down his beautiful features. God, Minho was fucking gay.

 

“I think I want to do a lot of things,” Chan said slowly, mind clearly spinning. “I - I…” he faltered.

 

“Yes?” Minho prompted, and Chan stepped closer.

 

He was still glancing around every so often as if worried they’d be seen, so Minho made a spur of the moment decision. “Do you want to talk about it in private?” he asked. “I live a street over from here.”

 

Surprisingly eagerly, Chan nodded.

 

————————

 

It surprised Chan just how much he wanted him.

 

Every other sexual experience in his life had been out of uncomfortable necessity, but this? He _needed_ it. Chan ached for Lee, and he wasn’t really quite sure how to process that fact. They’d just walked the short distance to Lee’s apartment block, a muggle building with fancy paintwork and a hi-tech passcode operated door. Chan had never seen one of those in person before, though he’d learnt about it in extracurricular reading. He’d wanted to take muggle studies, but that hadn’t been an option with his prejudiced parents, so Chan had taught himself.

 

“It’s good they’ve got one in the Ministry, or this would probably really freak you out,” Lee remarked as they reached the lifts. “Non-Ministry friends thought they were gonna die when it started moving.”

 

“I can understand that,” Chan laughed, voice still noticeably nervous but getting a little more confident in the situation. “I hated the Ministry ones for a good six months after I started working there. They feel so unnatural.”

 

“I bet you’re fine flying though, right?” Lee countered.

 

“Good point,” Chan admitted. They stepped in, and Lee pressed the button for his floor, the fifth. “It feels natural to me because I’ve always done it, but I bet it’d freak out a muggle like nobody’s business. Just like me and these damn metal deathtraps. At least I know the Ministry one runs on magic.”

 

“You’re surprisingly knowledgeable about the muggle world for a pureblood heir,” Lee remarked, seeming impressed by that fact. “I’ve seen the types of policies your parents push for in the Wizengamot.”

 

Chan shuddered. “I’m not like them.”

 

“I can tell.”

 

The lift stopped with a _ding_ and Lee gestured for Chan to step out first. “I’m just on the left, two doors down,” he told him. “Flat 32.”

 

Chan tapped his leg nervously as Lee unlocked his front door, glancing up and down the corridor. Logically, he knew he wouldn’t see anyone else he knew in a muggle apartment complex, but that didn’t stop his mind from imagining a coworker turning the corner. If someone saw him with Lee… He couldn’t _imagine_ the repercussions. So preoccupied was he that he didn’t notice that Lee had opened the door until he grabbed his hand and pulled him inside, flicking the light switch and illuminating a spacious living room.

 

Not letting go, Chan let himself be led over to the couch and sat down beside the other man. “Nobody can know about this,” he blurted out suddenly.

 

Minho rolled his eyes. “I’m not exactly gonna scream it from the rooftops, don’t worry. You’re not _that_ much of a pull, darling.”

 

He bristled. “Hey!”

 

“Oh sorry, I meant ‘you’re so unbelievably sexy, please take me now’,” Lee said in a deadpan monotone. “You’re hot, but that hideous outfit doesn’t do you any favours.”

 

“What’s wrong with my outfit?”

 

“Oh… Where to start…” Lee mused, looking him up and down. “It’d be passable if it weren’t for that jacket, to be honest. I want to _incendio_ it.”

 

Chan shrugged the offending garment off his shoulders and let it slide off the sofa and fall to the floor. “How about now?”

 

“Still want to burn it but, yeah, you look much better,” he admitted, shifting closer so their legs were pressed against each other. He put his hand on Chan’s knee and looked up to check he was okay with it. At the barely there nod he received in response, he smiled and shifted it higher up his thigh. The light touch of the Auror’s fingers felt like he was being set aflame. He _wanted_ , he wanted him desperately, and it must have shone through in his expression because Lee smirked as he looked at his face. _Minho_ smirked. If he was going to go through with this… He may as well use his name. “To be honest, though,” Minho continued. “I think I’d prefer the rest of it off.” Minho’s hand squeezed at Chan’s thigh, and his hips canted upwards without him really registering them doing so. “Eager, eager.”

 

It was like Chan’s first time. His rush of nervousness, at least, was similar, and the feeling that he was free-falling into the unknown. This, however, had a clear-cut difference from _that_ experience. Along with the nerves, along with the worries, he was overcome by genuine desire. He didn’t think he’d ever felt that before. Minho was kissing down his neck and it didn’t feel awkward and uncomfortable as all he’d known from past experience. It felt so _good._ The hand on his thigh rose higher and higher, shifting to the side until the other man’s hand was resting over the now straining zipper of his work trousers. “Fuck,” Chan exhaled, breathing coming heavier by the second as his pulse quickened. He was on the verge of begging, but wasn’t sure his pride could take it.

 

As it turned out, he didn’t have to.

 

Minho pressed once more against the bulge beneath his fingers, smiling as Chan gasped, then moved off the sofa to drop to his knees in front of him. Chan’s brain wanted to shut down at the sight of Lee looking up at him, batting his pretty eyes as he pressed kisses over the cloth of his trousers teasingly. He’d kind of just expected a handjob, to be honest, not- not _this._ “I’m the first guy to touch you like this, aren’t I?” Minho asked, a hand now on both of Chan’s thighs. Weakly, Chan nodded. “Better make it memorable then, huh?”

 

Chan had no doubts about his ability to do so. He was already a complete wreck and Minho had barely started. Slowly, tantalisingly so, Minho popped the button on his trousers free and pulled down the zipper, not breaking eye contact all the while. Chan wanted to look away, wanted to squirm under the heavy weight of his gaze, but somehow he couldn’t. He was like a rabbit caught in headlights. Without being instructed to, Chan lifted his hips and let Minho pull at his trousers and boxers so they pooled around his ankles. He was completely exposed, yet all he could focus on was the look on Minho’s face. The Auror was staring at him hungrily, _needily_ , like Chan was something inexplicably delicious that he couldn’t wait to sample. Somehow, Chan got the feeling that that Minho wanted this just as much as he did.

 

“You look confused, baby,” Minho noted, Chan’s emotions clearly obvious in his expression.

 

“I am, a little,” he admitted. “Why do you look like you want this so much?”

 

“Well firstly, darling— you’re hung as hell, so I want to put that in my mouth. That’s definitely a factor here. Secondly, you’re so clearly pent up that it’s going to be _my_ pleasure to make you fall apart,” Minho explained bluntly.

 

“I see.” Chan was struck dumb.

 

Pulling his wand from his pocket, Minho muttered what Chan recognised as an anti-transmission charm, pointing first at himself and then Chan. “Can’t be too careful,” he said with a shrug. “May I?” he asked, mouth less than an inch away from the weeping head of Chan’s cock. He opened his mouth, tongue sticking out past his rosy lips and waiting to taste. The lip-ring glinted silver against his skin. Chan was going to go insane.

 

Chan nodded and started to verbally affirm, but all of that was lost in a strangled groan as Minho immediately closed his lips around him. Suckling on his tip for a moment with enough force to make Chan see stars, he wasted no time in working his way down his dick, bobbing up and down, taking more in with each movement. Biting his lip, Chan tried to hold back the moans that threatened to spill out by the dozen, gripping at the couch cushions with whitened knuckles.

 

“Hey. Bang.” Minho pulled off him, looking up at him with a pointed glare. “I know you’re enjoying this, so _act like it_ , asshole.”

 

“Wh-”

 

“Contrary to popular belief, it does _not_ make you girly to moan, so either stop holding it in or I stop sucking you off. Those are your choices,” he went on, rolling his eyes before leaning down again. Not particularly liking the thought of the alternative, Chan tempered down his pride and stopped trying to bite back his moans. Once he’d started, he couldn’t _stop_ , embarrassingly loud with every lather of Minho’s tongue and harsh suck, his length rubbing up against the roof of Minho’s mouth in such a pleasurable way it was almost painful. Rather than the struggle to stay hard he was accustomed to, he was fighting not to come on the spot. After a particularly loud moan on Chan’s part, Minho lifted up to smile at him with spit-slicked, reddened lips. “That’s more like it, baby. Let me hear you.”

 

He hated how much he loved this.

 

Minho’s mouth was hot and wet, enclosed around him but not stifling in its heat. What his mouth couldn’t reach was made up for by his roughened hand tugging at the base, the friction of it heady and just so _good_ . And Minho’s tongue. _God_ , Minho’s tongue. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was a metamorphmagus with how it seemed to be everywhere he needed it all at once. “Fuck, Minho, _ah—_ feels so good, feels so-” Chan cut himself off with his own moan.

 

“You know, Channie,” Minho remarked, pulling back and continuing to get Chan off with long strokes of his hands. “That might just be the first time you’ve willingly said my name out loud.” Here, he laughed a little and rose up on his knees, grabbing at Chan’s hair and pulling him down to roughly kiss him. Chan could taste what must be himself on Minho’s tongue, but he oddly didn’t mind it. He kissed back eagerly, leaning more into it and taking control. Funnily enough, Lee seemed to like that, sighing softly against him. Experimenting further, he let his hand tangle in Minho’s hair, tugging harder than the younger had with his. As suspected, he was rewarded with a breathy gasp against the relentless push of their lips. “You’re learning fast for a straight boy,” Minho laughed, quickening the pace of his hand so that Chan was soon the one gasping instead.

 

Right now, sure, Minho was in control of the situation. He was far more accustomed to being with men, so he had an edge due to sheer experience. Chan was by no means submissive, however, keeping his hands in the other man’s hair and gripping at the strands between his fingers to ground himself when Minho refocused his attention downwards once more. Sitting back on his knees, he used the hand that had still been jerking Chan off to guide his cock back to the pretty lips Chan couldn’t take his eyes off. Sticking out his tongue, Minho licked a slow, savouring stripe up from head to base and back again, Chan’s dick shining with a sheen of his saliva. He reached under, cupping Chan’s balls, then opted for a shock dual sensation, taking him back in his mouth and sliding his lips almost fully down his length. With a visibly focused effort, Minho relaxed his throat and took him all the way in.

 

How someone still managed to look smug while deepthroating his cock, Chan had no idea.

 

In his defence, with Chan’s size… that was no easy feat. One nobody had accomplished before, in fact, though he only had one other comparison. That, he would _not_ be thinking about right now. Distracting himself, he pulled at Minho’s hair again and felt him moan around his cock as he started moving again. God, this was better than anything he’d ever had and it was only head. The thought of doing anything _else_ was so overwhelming combined with the feeling of Minho moaning that Chan had to hold himself from coming right that second. As little as he actually liked Lee, he didn’t want to be the jerk who came in someone’s mouth without warning. “Min- _ah, fuck,_ Minho, I-” he struggled to say, the words not easy to say when his brain felt like it was being sucked out along with his soul.

 

“Mhm?” Minho hummed, not slowing the bobbing of his head in the slightest.

 

“I’m gonna come if you don’t stop,” Chan managed to warn him, but was surprised by his response. Instead of pulling off, even as Chan tried to guide him off his dick, he reached up and put his hands over Chan’s to stop him, pushing himself back down further and looking up at him expectantly. Waiting.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

He wanted him to-

 

That, along with the sensation of another moan around him, was enough to send Chan over the edge. Eyes rolling back in his head from the force of his orgasm, Chan came harder than he ever had in his entire life. For a second, he genuinely thought he was going to pass out, especially given that he could feel Minho swallowing down every drop.

 

At long last, Minho drew back, panting and looking incredibly pleased with himself. There was drool smeared messily around his mouth, and he wiped it off with the cuff of his shirt. “Memorable enough?” he asked, voice something close to an octave lower than it had been at the start of the night, roughened and hoarse.

 

Chan said nothing. It _had_ been memorable, for sure. The word didn’t even begin to summarise the depths of what Chan had experienced, but…

 

As his mind came back to him, clear from the haze of lust, so did reality. “I have to go,” he said suddenly, panic shooting through him at the gravity of what he’d done.

 

“What?” Minho asked, confused and still knelt on the floor as Chan started hurriedly tucking himself back into his trousers in an anxious blur of motion. “Oh, you _have_ to be kidding me. Are you seriously trying to no-homo me after I’ve just sucked your dick?”

 

“Sorry I have somewhere to be I have to go I’m late for something I can’t be here I _can’t_ ,” Chan garbled out in a strange combined chain of excuses that, together, made even less believable sense.

 

“Chan, calm down,” Minho tried to say. He reached out as Chan stood up, grabbing his arm and using it to help himself stand too. A little shaky on his feet from kneeling so long, the waver in his step was a window enough for Chan to shake him off. He couldn’t and _wouldn’t_ deal with this. Not now, not ever. Faintly, he heard Minho call something after him but, through the ringing suddenly in his ears, Chan couldn’t make it out. He knew it was the coward’s way out. Chan didn’t care.

 

He ran away.

 

————————

 

Chan left his jacket behind, and Minho stayed vindictively true to his promise to _incendio_ it. Luckily, the fire detectors in his living room had long been disabled. Magic would have messed with them anyway, so he’d taken the batteries out when he moved in.  After choosing between taking a cold shower or jerking off, as he’d been left horny and annoyed, he chose the latter and did _not_ think about Bang while doing so.

 

(He absolutely did)

 

The memory was still fresh, he could still taste the guy, for fucks sake. Could he really be blamed? Complete asshole though Chan may be, he had the nicest dick that Minho had ever gone down on.

 

“Lord, I see what you do for others,” he sighed out loud dramatically, raising a middle finger to the sky as he _scourgified_ the still warm release from where it had landed on his stomach. Groaning, he hauled himself up off the couch, heading through to the kitchen and downing a glass of water. He needed to go to bed— he had training in the morning.

 

At least, exhausted from the events of his long and tiring day, he slept well that night.

 

That, however, didn’t make it any easy for him to drag himself out of bed the following morning. It wasn’t a physical training day, at least, so he didn’t have to be at the ministry for 6AM on the dot. Those sessions were the tenth circle of hell, and he’d swear by it. They were somewhat bearable when Weasley led them, as he didn’t want to be there any more than they did, but more often than not it was Wang, and he never let them catch a break.

 

Today was going to be meetings all morning with the registered Aurors to discuss the training of the NATF, sessions for which were beginning the next week. Potter had just told him to dress as usual in his training robes, so those were what he pulled on after showering. What was it going to be like, being in training meetings with the already qualified Aurors? He guessed he’d be finding out soon enough. After applying his usual daily array of hairstyling charms, Minho spun on the spot, reappearing at the Ministry Apparition Point amidst a gaggle of other workers. It was always busy this time in the morning, so he strode quickly into the main atrium to avoid being landed on.

 

While walking to the lifts, he was lucky enough to happen upon a friend he’d been missing a lot lately. Minho would recognise that stature anywhere, short but noticeably muscular, carrying himself with an athlete’s grace. “Hey!” he called out, walking faster to catch up with him. “Changbin, wait up!”

 

Changbin looked around him for the voice’s source, beaming when his eyes landed on Minho. “Min!” he exclaimed, slowing until Minho caught up. “Wow, I haven’t seen you in ages!”

 

“You’d think we’d run into each other more often given we work in the same damn building,” Minho lamented, slinging an arm around Changbin’s shoulders and stepping into the lift hanging off him. There was an Auror trainee in there with them, along with an assortment of other workers, and they glared at Minho. Everyone was always jealous of his friendship with _the_ Changbin Seo, ex-pro-seeker, and the fact that the Auror trainees already hated him didn’t help. “How’s the fiancee doing?” Minho asked.

 

“He’s great!” Changbin told him enthusiastically. “We were just talking the other night about needing to have you around again, actually. Are you free this weekend?”

 

“Not Saturday, no, but I’d die for someone to feed me Sunday lunch…” Minho batted his eyes hopefully.

 

“See you then, in that case,” Changbin smiled, slapping him on the back before stepping out as the lift reached his floor. “I’ll patronus you the time!” he called just as the doors shut once more, and then Minho was left with Enid from his (now-ex) training class for the last uncomfortable minute. Neither said a word.

 

The lift dinged at the Auror floor, and Minho left first, wanting away from Enid as soon as possible. Potter was walking through the offices and grinned, waving at Minho and gesturing for him to follow. This was it, then.

 

Time to join the big leagues.

 

————————

 

Junhyuk hated staying with his grandparents. Either side of the family was pretty terrible, but his father’s family were by far the worst. They were who he’d just spent the night with, but it was luckily just the one this time. His mother would be picking him up any minute, and he’s get to go spend the day at the muggle primary school again. Junhyuk knew his grandparents would regret paying for his occlumency lessons if they knew the information he was currently shielding. He took a vindictive sort of pleasure in knowing their money had ended up aiding his rebellion against their prejudiced ways.

 

His father’s parents _hated_ muggles and muggleborns alike, looking down their noses at half-bloods and only showing any actual respect to a selective array of purebloods. Yeonseok and Minjeon, the leaders of the Bang family, regarded the majority of the wizarding community as beneath them, whether it be due to blood or financial status. They’d be repulsed if they found out that one of the few people he genuinely liked in the world was a muggle. He hated them, and didn’t really get on well with his mother’s side of the family either. The only people he genuinely enjoyed spending time with were his parents, one of his magical tutors out of five total, and Dr. Lee. With even his parents, he felt like his mother didn’t really want him there sometimes. In Dr. Lee, he’d found the same kind of acceptance he loved from his father: no judgement for simply wanting to learn, for soaking up knowledge like a sponge as he yearned to do.

 

He’d accidentally healed a cut on Dr. Lee’s face with an outburst of magic the other day, terror shooting through him at the thought of being found out. He wouldn’t have been able to bear it if he’d been responsible for his teacher getting obliviated. Luckily, Dr. Lee had brushed it off, as muggles thankfully tended to with accidental magic. Junhyuk sat by the door and waited for his mother to arrive. She was due any second now to take him to school.

 

He kept waiting. The clock ticked by, counting down the time until he’d officially be late. The threshold was breached, the minute hand on the ornate grandfather clock in Bang Manor’s entrance hall passing 9:00AM and continuing onward. Junhyuk sighed.

 

_Not again._

 

His parents must have had a fight. Mother always forgot him after those.

 

————————

 

Hyunjin was having one of those days.

 

Actually, no.

 

This was _beyond_ ‘one of those days’ — this was just straight up horrendous. He’d forgotten to set his alarm spells the night before, and as Woojin was working the night shift his partner hadn’t even been there to shake him out of bed. Bedraggled and barely holding himself together without coffee, he’d just stumbled his way through catering the morning tea gathering of a gaggle of bigots who turned their noses up at the sight of the scorned Hwang heir. _Ex-heir._ Sometimes even he forgot the change in title, as long as it had been since he was cast away. He was good at ignoring the scorn from high-society at this point, but today Hyunjin had been on the verge of hexing one woman. She’d lamented the loss of a ‘perfectly good pureblood heir’ and blamed Woojin for ‘turning him gay’.

 

Unlike his best friend, Hyunjin couldn’t cast effective spells silently, so keeping his mouth shut was restraint enough. There was a reason one of them was an Auror and another a Chef. It was a testament to just how well-practised he was in self-control that he’d bit back the retaliatory spells on the tip of his tongue.

 

Slander against himself he could take, but against the love of Hyunjin’s life? That was beyond too far. Woojin had _not_ ‘turned him gay’, he’d just helped Hyunjin through the process of self-realisation. Sure, Woojin was the reason Hyunjin had come to terms with his sexuality, given that they’d become friends and Hyunjin had fallen in love with him, but that hadn’t _created_ his identity. He’d always been gay, though he’d pushed that fact deep, _deep_ down until after Hogwarts.

 

He’d met Woojin at Hogwarts, but had only spoken to him once and had never known his name. When they ran into each other again, half a decade later while Hyunjin was apprenticing as a healer, Woojin had asked him out for coffee to catch up. At the time, Hyunjin was still everything his parents wanted from their son— he’d managed to pass his NEWTs somehow, with a _lot_ of studying and Minho’s help, and had a respectable career path.

 

Coffee dates had become a thing to the point where Hyunjin began to wonder if they were coffee _dates_ . Along with that came the ensuing sexuality crisis. He’d known from their first conversation that Woojin was gay, as he’d just casually brought it up in the offhanded sort of way that first made Hyunjin believe that it could be normal to talk about with him. He knew Minho was gay, and Changbin was bisexual, but they were too close for him to consider. To tell his closest friends would be to make it _real_ that he was debating the nature of his sexuality. For a time, Woojin became a safe space of sorts, someone separate from the terrifying reality of the life he was to leave behind.

 

Later, he found out that Woojin had fallen in love with him two months before Hyunjin had even realised that he was gay, but had kept quiet about it to let him figure himself out first. Woojin was a saint, and Hyunjin would never let anyone tell him differently. Even though he’d longed for Hyunjin, he hadn’t let on a thing until the younger himself had confessed.

 

_“Woojin…” Hyunjin said, so quietly that it was barely audible. It was spring, and they were in the gardens of Woojin’s family manor, watching the ducklings follow their mother around the lake. Sat on a picnic blanket with Woojin in the sun, Hyunjin felt like he was in heaven and could want for nothing more than this gentle simplicity._

 

_That was when he knew— he had to tell him._

 

_“Yes, Jinnie?” Woojin turned to face him, the sunlight casting a shadow under his jawline and making him look even more godlike than he did on a regular basis. Hyunjin’s breath caught in his throat. Yep. Definitely gay._

 

_“I think… I think I need to talk to you about something.”_

 

_“I’m all ears, Jinnie. You can tell me anything, I promise. No judgement.”_

 

_Hyunjin knew that, but it didn’t make it any easier. “I think I’ve figured out why I haven’t liked any of the girls my parents have sent me on dates with. It’s because, well, they’re…”_

 

_His words caught in his throat as his chest felt more and more crushed by the second. Noticing this, Woojin reached out and held his hand. “Breathe, Jinnie,” he reminded him. “It’s only me.”_

 

_“It’s because they’re girls. I don’t like girls,” Hyunjin blurted out, realising only when Woojin reached up to wipe his cheeks that he’d started to cry._

 

_“Come here, baby,” Woojin murmured, pulling Hyunjin to his chest. “It’s going to be okay, I promise. I’ve got you.”_

 

_Hyunjin, pressed against Woojin and letting himself be held, spoke again. “Don’t hate me, please, I couldn’t bear it.”_

 

_“Hyunjin Hwang, what the hell sort of hypocrite would I be if I hated you for being gay?” Woojin asked, confused._

 

_“Not for that…”_

 

_Woojin pulled back a little, still holding Hyunjin close but moving apart enough to look him in the eyes. “Then for what?”_

 

_Hyunjin broke their eye contact, too scared to see Woojin’s face as he told him. “I’m in love with you, Woojin— that’s how I realised.”_

 

_“Again, Jinnie, do you think I’m a hypocrite?”_

 

_Woojin cupped his jaw with one hand, turning him back to face him. Hyunjin’s heart faltered at the look in his friend’s eyes. “Wh-what do you mean?...” he stammered out, trembling as he watched Woojin’s eyes drop to his lips and then back up at him once more._

 

_“Oh, Jinnie…” Woojin sighed. “Can’t you see that I’m completely in love with you too?”_

 

_What?_

 

_Hyunjin couldn’t quite believe it, but he got proof soon enough. Leaning in, closing the short gap between them, Woojin kissed him. For someone who had been miserable and uncertain about everything in his structured lifetime, this was entirely different. Of this, Hyunjin had never been more sure._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey!!! so sorry it's been a while- i had exams so i had to focus on those, but i'm back now!! lmk what you thought of this one <33 i love comments, n theres also my twitter @woominchans (i post a lot of wip spoilers) and my cc: curiouscat.me/woominchans <3333


	7. The Reality of Siyeon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He just had to keep on surviving until he could be free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> //spoiler//
> 
> I'm going to add a TW here for unhealthy parenting. There's no physical abuse but some of the behaviour towards Junhyuk in this is unhealthy and there is a flashback involving emotional abuse towards Chan. There’s also the death of a house elf so if that is going to trigger anything please skip past it (mipsy is fine don’t worry!!)

Day drinking was hardly the highlight of anyone’s life, but she felt that it was justified. After being rejected again after trying to sleep with her husband the night before, she’d gone to Viola’s rather than sit at home waiting for Chan to return from storming off.  

 

Siyeon hated everything about her life at this point. She hated her smartass son, hated her husband for not sleeping with her, hated _everything_. She’d reason that it was the alcohol talking, giving she was already several firewhiskeys in at 3pm, but Siyeon knew all too well that she’d feel exactly the same when she was sober.

 

Wait.

 

 _3pm_.

 

Oh, fuck. She was supposed to be picking up her brat from his dalliances in the muggle world. Stumbling a little, she stood up from her seat at the bar. Viola reached out a hand to steady her; she’d joined Siyeon to support her in her woes, though hadn’t had much to drink herself. “Yeonie, are you sure you’re alright?”

 

 _Alright?_ Siyeon wanted to laugh. Instead, she nodded reassuringly. “Just have to go pick up my darling son, Vi. That’s all.”

 

Still looking a bit worried, Viola let her go nonetheless. Once out of the bar, Siyeon spun on the spot, stomach lurching even more so from the apparition than usual as she arrived with a _pop_ in the alleyway near Junhyuk’s school. Looking down, she groaned at the sight of raw skin on her pinky. She’d fucking splinched off her fingernail. _Wonderful._ At least she’d get to see Junhyuk’s pretty teacher for her efforts. 

 

She looked at her watch. Only fifteen minutes late— she’d done worse, to be fair. Junhyuk shouldn’t mind too much. 

 

———————————— 

 

Sitting there alone in the classroom with Junhyuk, it felt like break and lunchtime all over again for a very tired Dr. Felix Lee. It had been a very long day, not that teaching primary school children was ever easy. Today, however, had been particularly difficult. Between having to break up fights in the playground to having to try and teach Gretel Simmons basic maths, his energy was considerably drained. Junhyuk had, of course, finished the question sheet in three minutes flat and started reading some kind of obscure scientific text for the rest of the lesson. Felix had, therefore, decided that enough was enough. He was going to ask Mrs Bang about the possibility of having Junhyuk moved into a higher year. When she finally arrived, at least. 

 

Junhyuk was no bother while Felix sat sorting through his emails— the boy was just reading a book in the corner of the room, sitting cross-legged on one of the beanbag chairs. Eventually, Siyeon Bang knocked on the door to the classroom, smiling apologetically at Felix and scouring the room until she saw her son. “Sorry for the delay, Dr. Lee!” she said, beckoning at Junhyuk to come to her. “Let’s get you out of your teacher’s hair, shall we, Junhyuk?”

 

“Actually, about that,” Felix cut in. “I wanted to talk to you quickly, if you have the time?”

 

Mrs Bang smiled widely at him, seeming strangely excited to do so. “Of course!”

 

“Junhyuk,” Felix asked, “You know where the staff room is?” Junhyuk nodded. “That’s great! Can you go join my friend there while I talk to your mother?”

 

“The one who went to make coffee?”

 

“Yep!” Felix confirmed. “He’ll get you a juice or something from the staff fridge too, if you ask him.”

 

Grinning at Felix, Junhyuk hurried off without a single glance at his mother. Now that Felix was focused on her entirely, he noticed that she looked a little under the weather. There was a pallid sort of sheen to her skin and she was swaying a little on the spot. Maybe she’d caught a cold or something. Felix offered her a seat, hoping it would help, and sat down beside her. Mrs Bang batted her eyes at him, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He was getting a very weird vibe from her today, somehow. She smiled. “You look very handsome today, Dr. Lee.”

 

“Uh, thank you?” Felix replied awkwardly, looking away from her. “Anyway! I wanted to talk to you about maybe getting Junhyuk transferred to a higher level class. He’s too advanced for this one, in my opinion.”

 

“Of _course_ he is,” Mrs Bang said, sounding strangely bitter about it. Felix was probably reading into it, though; Junhyuk was too lovely a child for any parent to resent. Then, in a strange and unwelcome veer off-topic, she spoke up once more. “My husband won’t sleep with me, you know? I tried last night because it’s been so long that I felt that we should try, but he stormed out of the house— I think there’s something wrong with him. Or me, perhaps…”

 

Felix said nothing. Maybe if he ignored the topic it would go away. 

 

_It didn’t._

 

“Am I ugly, Dr. Lee?” Mrs Bang asked, voice tapering off into a whine. 

 

“No, you’re not,” he reassured her uncomfortably, leaning back in his seat as she shifted closer towards him. A waft of something strong hit him. “Mrs Bang, are you _drunk?”_

 

She giggled. “Maybe a little tipsy. You think I’m pretty, then?” she asked, shifting still nearer. Felix stood up, backing away, but she followed, stepping close to him. Reaching out, she trailed a hand down his chest with a thoughtful look on her face. “I like you more than my husband.”

 

“I’m flattered, Mrs Bang, but this is very inappropriate and I don’t-”

 

Junhyuk’s intoxicated mother surged towards him, clearly attempting to kiss him, and Felix screwed his eyes shut, covering his face with his arms. The blow never came. Mrs Bang didn’t reach him, somehow. Fearfully, Felix slowly opened one eye.

 

Someone was holding her back. There was a hand on her shoulder, one Felix recognised as well as his own, an engagement band glinting on one finger as his accoster was pulled away.

 

“Excuse me, _madam_ ,” Changbin gritted out, a smile on his face that could not be more obviously fake, “What the _fuck_ do you think you’re trying to do to my fiance?”

 

“Fiance?” Bang asked weakly, her face draining of all colour. “You- you’re, you’re a?..” she trailed off, looking completely disgusted at the revelation. “I was hitting on a homo?”

 

Hand still on her shoulder, Changbin physically pushed her away, moving to stand in front of Felix protectively. “Don’t you dare speak to him like that. Don’t you _dare.”_

 

Felix slipped his arms around Changbin’s waist, trying to sooth him. “It’s okay, Binnie. She’s drunk, she probably doesn’t mean it.”

 

“That’s not an excuse for bigotry and you know it, Lix,” Changbin reasoned, though a little more calmly. “It just brings the nastiness to the surface.”

 

Looking at Changbin fully for the first time, Mrs Bang’s eyes widened a little, as if in recognition. _“You.”_ She scowled at the two of them, the full force of her glare directed towards Felix’s hands resting on Changbin’s hips. “You’re disgusting. All of your kind are, you should be ashamed,” she spat, turning on the spot and stalking out of the room. From the hallway, they could hear her screeching for Junhyuk. 

 

Worried, Felix went out to see if his student was okay, but they were already gone by the time the two men had run out to the parking lot. Seeing Felix wringing his hands, Changbin took them both in his own. “I’m sure he’s fine, Lixie,” he reassured him. “She can’t have been driving, or we’d be able to hear them pulling away.”

 

Sure enough, the parking lot was silent. The school was fairly secluded, so once the pickup rush was over there wasn’t much traffic at all; Changbin was right, they couldn’t hear a single car. 

 

“You know,” Felix said thoughtfully as they went back inside, “If she wasn’t a muggle I’d have sworn she recognised you back there.”

 

“Yeah,” Changbin agreed, sighing contentedly as Felix wrapped his arms around his waist. He always sought closeness when something freaked him out, and the Mrs Bang fiasco had certainly done so. “Weird, that. It’s not like anyone who knows quidditch would be sending their kid to a muggle primary school, though.”

 

“Maybe she just wanted to hit on you too,” Felix joked, laughing as Changbin leant around to glare at him. 

 

“Gross,” Changbin made a retching sound, still turning to hold Felix properly. He could obviously tell that, despite laughing it off, Felix was still quite shaken from the ordeal. “Wanna go home, baby?”

 

“Like you wouldn’t _believe_.”

 

“Come on then,” Changbin said, grabbing Felix’s bag from the floor beside his desk and packing up for him. “I got you, let’s go— I’ll even cook tonight, you can just rest, okay?”

 

“Have I mentioned lately that I love you?” Felix sighed, grabbing the hand Changbin held out and checking that the coast was clear so that he could apparate them home.

 

“Yes, but I wouldn’t mind hearing it again,” Changbin replied, the side of his mouth pulling up into the smile reserved for when he was being deliberately annoying. 

 

Felix rolled his eyes also, funnily enough, in the way reserved for Changbin being deliberately annoying. “I love you, idiot,” he told him nonetheless.

 

“Who wouldn’t?” Changbin answered dramatically.

 

Wisely, he chose then to apparate them home before Felix had a chance to hit him.

 

———————————— 

 

Junhyuk normally had a variety of feelings towards his mother. Frustration was common, as was annoyance, boredom and borderline resentment from the way she neglected him. This emotion, however, was new regarding her. _Terror._

 

She was chasing him, trying to grab onto him, screaming at him for his noncompliance in what was an idiotic and highly dangerous way to get them home. Junhyuk may not have many years of life experience under his belt, but he could tell when someone was drunk. He knew, too, that apparating drunk was highly dangerous and strictly prohibited for a myriad of reasons. Despite this, as soon as they’d gotten a suitable distance from the school and any prying eyes, his mother had tried to hold onto Junhyuk to attempt side-along apparition. He’d shrugged her off the second he realised her plan, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. If she caught him, in the state she was in, his mother could very well kill them both.

 

So, naturally, Junhyuk was terrified. 

 

With only one foreseeable option left to stop himself from being splinched into oblivion, Junhyuk activated the inbuilt charm on the pendant his father had given him, squeezing it hard and praying to any deity that he could think of that help would come in time. 

 

“I’ve got you, you little shit,” Siyeon snapped, grabbing him by the sleeve. “Why won’t you _understand_ that I just want to go home?!”

 

There was a _crack_ behind him, and Junhyuk slumped in relief, letting himself be tugged away from her. “What the hell are you doing, Siyeon?” his father asked, out of breath. “Would you like to explain why I just had to sprint to the apparition point to save my son from his _own mother?”_ Siyeon stayed tellingly quiet, and Chan crouched down in front of his son. “What’s wrong, Junhyukie?”

 

Junhyuk sniffled a little, trying to fight back tears and failing somewhat, feeling them streak hotly down his cheeks. He, too, was out of breath from trying to escape Siyeon. “She’s drunk and tried to apparate us,” Junhyuk admitted softly, scared to say it because of the storm he knew his words would cause. 

 

His father, sure enough, stood up with rage in his eyes. “You _what,_ Siyeon?! You could have killed him!”

 

“I’m not even that drunk!” she protested, stepping towards them with a contradictory stumble in her step. 

 

“We’re not having this conversation here,” Junhyuk’s father said, his tone deathly calm. “Stay here, Siyeon. I’ll drop Junhyuk off and come get you.”

 

Hugging his father tightly around the waist and trembling, Junhyuk let himself be taken home, entrusted to the care of Mipsy as his father returned to pick up Siyeon. Junhyuk had never, _never,_ seen him so angry. Knowing the storm that would soon befall the house, Junhyuk hurried upstairs to his room. 

 

———————————— 

 

Chan was well aware, given recent indiscretions, that he was hardly a saint when it came to his marriage. In most cases, therefore, he wouldn’t be right in scolding his wife. This, though?

 

This was inexcusable. Junhyuk could have been killed due to Siyeon’s irresponsible actions, and Chan didn’t plan on letting her forget it. When he arrived back to the alley where he’d left her, however, he found her passed out on the concrete floor. Sighing, Chan scooped her up into his arms, noticing that she’d splinched off her fingernail, and apparated them both back to their home. “Mipsy!” he called out, and his house elf appeared at once. “Can you make sure she doesn’t somehow injure herself, please?” Chan asked, then added as an afterthought, “And if she tries to hurt you, you’re not to let her. That’s an order.”

 

Gratefully, Mipsy nodded before popping away with Siyeon. Chan had needed to specify due to Siyeon’s past behaviour towards the house elf when drunk. Breathing slowly to try and calm himself, Chan let himself properly think for the first time since getting Junhyuk’s distress call. 

 

Right. Seungmin would be worried given that Chan had just upped and left. To rectify that, he sent off a patronus message to his assistant. That taken care of, Chan went upstairs, knocking lightly on Junhyuk’s bedroom door. “It’s me, Junhyukie,” he called out softly, letting his son be the one to let him in. After a second, the lock clicked and the door swung open, revealing a still shaking, harrowed looking Junhyuk. “Hey, sweetie,” Chan greeted him, holding out his arms and letting out a sharp exhale of air as Junhyuk knocked the breath from him, hugging him tight. “I’m so sorry that that happened, can we talk about it?”

 

They walked over to the bed, sitting down side by side with their hands linked. Chan rubbed his thumb soothingly over the back of his son’s hand, waiting patiently for him to open up. “I was so scared,” Junhyuk admitted, trembling enough that Chan could feel it shaking his own fingers. “She got so angry with me, but I was just trying to stop her hurting both of us.”

 

“I know, sweetie,” Chan sighed, pulling Junhyuk into his side. “I’m going to start bringing you to school until I can find someone to start doing the school run for me instead of your mother.”

 

Junhyuk blinked up at him, relief shining in his widened eyes. Then, in a voice that broke Chan’s heart, he said “You know, father, I don’t think mother likes me.”

 

What could Chan say? He’d more than an inkling that it was the truth.

 

“Anyone would be a fool not to love you, Junhyukie,” he told him, hugging him tighter. _And Siyeon was a fool, indeed._

 

———————————— 

 

Friday rolled around, and Minho found himself still trying (and failing) to forget about Bang. It was the last briefing before the training for the NATF began, and he had settled in well among the other Aurors, whose ranks he would be joining in the New Year. He hadn’t really made friends with them yet, but got the sense that he would once he’d proved himself— there certainly wasn’t the hostility he received from his training class. Minho had a chance here, at least, one he had never been given from his same-aged peers. 

 

For all the briefings they’d had this week, explaining the series of methods, both defensive and offensive, that the NATF could use to protect the ministry, Potter had said nothing about how the trainees would be divvied out. Would Minho just turn up and find out on the first day?

 

As if she’d read his mind, which she couldn’t have, given Minho was trained to the highest level of Occlumency, Jodie Hemingway spoke up. Hemingway was a mousy-haired woman with terrifying muscles despite being about 4ft tall, and Minho had no doubt she could genuinely kill him with ease. She was one of the mentors for newer Aurors, and Minho was secretly quite hoping he’d be assigned to her squadron. “Potter,” she said, and Harry Potter paused to let her speak. “We should explain how the assignments work, before you forget like you did last year.”

 

Potter smiled sheepishly. “Ah, yes. Thanks for exposing me to the new guys, Jodie,” he rolled his eyes. Minho could tell that they were friends. “If you passed three people or under in the tests, they will all be assigned to you to train. Those who passed more than three will have the extras allocated to another Auror, and those passed by our Junior Aurors will be divided between us also. Any questions?”

 

“The refresher course, too.”

 

“Whoops, sorry Jodie— it’s good I have you here, clearly. Those who are already in the NATF will be receiving a refresher course once a fortnight for the duration of the regular training period. This will be at random, so you’ll encounter a few different people for that,” Potter added, blushing at having forgotten.

 

Oh, that was simple enough, Minho supposed. He’d passed three people only, so he’d just be training them. Three days a week from 5-8pm, Minho would be training them: Leah Smith, a fiery woman from the Goblin Relations department, Changkyun Lim, a deceptively soft looking man who had damn near knocked Minho out (he was from Granger’s department, so Minho really shouldn’t have underestimated him like that) and… Wait. _Fuck._ The third person Minho had passed, the third person he would be spending 3hrs a week alone in a duelling chamber with, was none other than the man whose dick he’d sucked less than a week ago.

 

He would be training Bang, and there was nothing he could do about it. Thinking about it further, however, Minho smiled— he would, at least, get to beat his ass on the duelling floor. That would show him for leaving Minho hard after getting the best head of his life from the Auror. Plus, watching Bang try and pretend that nothing had happened between them would undoubtedly be hilarious to bear witness to.

 

It would be fine, or at least Minho _hoped_ it would be fine. To be honest, if he managed to rile Bang up enough, he might even get a good dicking out of it. He probably shouldn’t be thinking like that, especially given he’d have to be training him for months after that happening, but… His dick was just so _nice_ , genuinely the best he’d ever had in his mouth. Minho hated that it was attached to someone like Chan, but by Merlin did he still want to fuck him. 

 

Minho sighed as the meeting came to a close. Regardless of the slight excitement at the prospect of payback, he still wasn’t quite sure how he was going to deal with this new situation. He needed to vent.

 

———————————— 

 

Chan had already dropped Junhyuk off at school when Siyeon woke up. He’d patronus-messaged Seungmin telling him that he needed to take the morning off for personal reasons, and as Chan had too much paid leave to even keep track of it was fine. Seungmin could more than hold fort on his own. Chan could probably leave for a month and come back to Seungmin doing both of their jobs with ease.

 

Siyeon sat up, shaking her head as though to clear it of water, and winced. From how drunk she had been, her brain must be packing one hell of a hangover. Chan didn’t really think she deserved the potion that would cure it, but he needed to talk to her level headed. “Next to you on the side-table,” he prompted. Siyeon jumped. She hadn’t, it seemed, noticed him until then. He’d been sitting in an armchair in the corner of their bedroom, reading a book while he waited for her to wake. Grabbing the small potion phial, she necked it in one, face screwing up at the bitter taste. Finally, she met his eyes. “Do you remember,” Chan began, struggling to keep his voice level, “what you did yesterday, Siyeon?”

 

She nodded, at least having the decency to look a little ashamed, but not much. “Thank you for picking up Junhyuk, Chan.”

 

“For _picking_ him _up_?!” Chan burst out, the rage that had been bubbling beneath the surface since the previous day boiling over all at once. “You could have KILLED him, Siyeon!”

 

“I didn’t realise I was that drunk!” she protested, as if that made it somehow okay. As if Junhyuk’s life was worth so little. “I just wanted to escape.”

 

They both did, it was all they had wanted from the start, to escape from a marriage neither had ever wanted. Chan couldn’t wish that it had never happened, as that would mean forfeiting Junhyuk, but he couldn’t say that he didn’t still want to be free. Nothing was simple between Chan and Siyeon, and it made him miserable too, but he would never have done as she had and endangered the one good thing that had come from said misery. He’d sooner die than lay a finger on his son. Therein lay the difference between Chan and his wife. She grew violent when drunk, but it had never been towards Chan or Junhyuk until yesterday. There was a reason, however, that Chan had made sure to keep Mipsy safe. 

 

“You need to stay away from Junhyuk, Siyeon,” Chan told her completely seriously. “You can stay in the spare family manor, or elsewhere. Honestly, I don’t care, but I want you gone before he’s back from school. He doesn’t need to see you again right now.”

 

Siyeon laughed dryly. “You say that as if that doesn’t sound like heaven to me. Promise that you’ll pretend that everything is fine, and I’ll do the same,” she told Chan, swinging her legs out of the bed and heading over to her wardrobe after grabbing her wand. She was still fully dressed from the day before, as she’d drunkenly tried to hit Mipsy when the elf had tried to change her. Mipsy, ordered by Chan not to let that happen, had left her as she was. Siyeon tried to spell her clothes to pack themselves, but failed, glowering at Chan when he did so wandlessly. Usually, he’d tone things down to spare her feelings, but not today. “Always think you’re so much better than me,” Siyeon spat, shutting the trunk manually rather than miss further humiliation. “You and the brat both.”

 

It seemed Siyeon would be letting everything out today.

 

“ _Don’t_ talk about him like that,” Chan replied, voice soft yet undeniably dangerous. Siyeon looked up at him, and flinched at the expression on her husband’s face. Chan would never hurt her, but he wasn’t above scaring her after the shit she had pulled the day before.

 

Long-sufferingly, Siyeon sighed. “Look, Chan,” she began, a look of something like regret flashing across her model-esque features. “I never wanted to love you, though I tried for the sake of necessity. But Junhyuk? Him I wanted to love, more than anything, but I… I just-”

 

“You just _don’t,_ do you?” Chan finished her sentence. 

 

She shook her head. “We’ve never loved each other, so how can I love our son?”

 

“That’s not an excuse.” Chan was right. Junhyuk was the only person in the entire world that Chan could truly say that he loved. It wasn’t an excuse, and never would be. 

 

Unsurprisingly, Siyeon didn’t have a response to that. Instead, she picked up the trunk. Chan had spelled it feather-light, more to annoy her than to aid her in carrying it, and the unexpected lightness almost made her fall over as she put too much effort into raising it. Chan wanted to laugh, but he didn’t. There was no humour in this situation.

 

“I’ll be at Viola's. I’ll tell her you and Junhyuk are having bonding time so that I can rest. She'll believe me, I hope,” she told Chan, and he nodded curtly. He chose not to walk her out to the apparition point. 

 

Perhaps he should have expected Siyeon’s tendencies towards Mipsy would one day be exacerbated. He hadn’t foreseen Siyeon’s resentment spiralling so far out of control, and though he hadn’t directly endangered his child Chan still felt somehow responsible for not expecting it. It was uncommon, however, for the older Pureblood families to treat their house elves well as Chan did. 

 

His own family had been no exception.

 

Though they hadn’t supported the Dark Lord back in the day, that didn’t mean that Chan’s parents were the paragon of equal rights within the wizarding world. They simply refused to bow to a greater leader, a matter of pride rather than decency. Siyeon was better than them in that she didn’t believe that muggles and muggleborns should be enslaved to serve a superior race, but she still viewed herself as better. It had been bred into her, and unlike Chan she hadn’t gone against said breeding. Chan would be disowned if he spoke against them directly, and he couldn’t do that to Junhyuk’s inheritance. As soon as he took over the lordship one day, however, he’d take spiteful pride in donating large sums of money to charities they’d roll in their graves at him choosing.

 

Chan had loved the family house elf, Poppy, more than he’d ever loved his parents as a child. She’d raised him, after all, Chan cast to the side while his mother and father paid attention to everything but their son, other than to try and indoctrinate him into their pureblood views. Chan had believed them, for a time, but had ended up making friends with muggle children after persuading Poppy to take him on trips to the park near their house. Even as a small child, something hadn’t sat right about how his parents felt themselves above the muggles. The other children had welcomed the lonely boy into their midst, and Poppy had watched disillusioned, there to keep Chan safe but unseen. He’d told the worried parents of the other kids that his family was nearby. 

 

When Chan’s father found out one day, home from the Wizengamot unexpectedly early, he had snapped Poppy’s neck in front of his son.

 

After the death of his first and only friend, Chan hadn’t grown close to the replacement elf. He hadn’t wanted to risk their life. Until Chan had moved out after Hogwarts, he had to walk past Poppy’s head on the wall every single day. 

 

Chan hated his parents, hated his life. He couldn’t escape, not even from his marriage as his parents would disown him for getting a divorce, but at least he had Junhyuk. In all the shitty cards Chan had been dealt throughout his miserable lifetime, one thing had turned out right. Did it make him a bad person, the fact that he looked forward to the day his parents passed away?

 

Maybe so, but that changed nothing.

 

He just had to keep on surviving until he could be free.

 

———————————— 

 

Hyunjin was in Woojin’s lap when their best friend let himself into their apartment with the key both had grown to regret giving him. Instead of shrieking and covering his eyes like, you know, a normal person, Minho just flopped down onto the couch opposite and waited for Woojin to put his shirt back on. From the way Minho was acting, they knew they wouldn’t have the apartment to themselves again for several hours.

 

Sighing, Hyunjin handed his partner his shirt, sliding off his lap and onto the sofa next to him. “Yes, Min?” he asked, trying to stay patient while dealing with his friend being, well, himself. “What is it now?”

 

“So I sucked his dick,” Minho began, looking at them expectantly as though expecting surprise.

 

“You’re going to have to be a little more specific there, dear,” Woojin replied, and Minho flipped him off without a second thought.

 

“First of all, fuck you,” he said, though not bothering to move from his position face-first on the couch to glare at him. Damn. Whoever he’d gone down on had really done a number on Minho’s brain— maybe this was more serious than either Hyunjin or Woojin had first assumed. “Remember how I told you I thought Chan Bang from the finance department was into me?”

 

Hyunjin’s jaw dropped. “You _didn’t_.”

 

“Oh I absolutely did, and he loved every second of it, right up until when he came in my mouth and then hightailed it out of there in full no-homo mode.” Hyunjin gasped, but Minho wasn’t even done. “Also, guess who’s going to be training him three hours a week now for the NATF?”

 

_Oh damn, indeed._

 

“Go on…” Woojin sighed. They were _definitely_ not getting any more alone time before Woojin’s next shift but, to be honest? Gossip this good was worth it. Bang, supposedly straight heir to one of the Noble and Most Ancient families, had let their best friend suck him off? Both of them were practically vibrating in their seats waiting for the full story— Minho hadn’t pulled drama quite like this in a while. Though the pair of them lived pretty drama-free lives nowadays, Minho always made things interesting. 

 

“So,” Minho began, sitting up so that he could make dramatic arm gestures while he spoke, “let me set the scene. I walk into a bar.”

 

Hyunjin laughed softly, fondly. “That never ends well.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for waiting for this update, and sorry it was a pretty heavy one, but it was necessary for the plot to move forwards. next chapter we'll get to see the start of training, and all the tension that ensues, so u can look forward to that!! i've uploaded a few other things since i last updated this, so have a look at my account for those <33 as ever, i'm on twitter @woominchans - hit me up on there, i post spoilers and scream abt my boys

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos and the like are much appreciated if you have them to spare <3


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